Jason from Elastic here. We are actively developing cross datacenter replication (internally we are calling it "cross cluster replication" so you will likely see it referred to this in the future but of course this is subject to change).

I can not give a timeframe, but it is one of the top features on the ES roadmap. :)

Source: I am an engineer working on this feature.

Maybe you could be inspired by my async-to-async database: https://github.com/tinspin/rupy/wiki/Storage

> Cross data center replication is really a much needed feature.

This works pretty well already if you are running on your own hardware and have a good network. We've been running a three data center setup across the US for four years. Next year we may extend it across the Atlantic.

https://greg.blog/2014/01/09/scaling-elasticsearch-part-1-ov...

You have always been able to use the query DSL to write queries, aggregations, etc. If you're referring to scripting then yes, in 5.0 the "Painless" scripting language was introduced which allows you to send scripted queries via API request without having to store them on the server. The language was designed to not allow for exploits like when using other languages for running scripts on Elasticsearch.

I meant querying the index from the frontend directly.

As in a publicly facing front end? If that's your case, you wouldn't ever want to expose Elasticsearch to your front end directly. If you have a private front end that is inside your firewall then just create HTTP requests to Elasticsearch - it has a RESTful API.

But querying from a publicly facing front end would be a poor idea - would you expose a database directly to the front end?

It is called Elasticsearch and not Elasticdatabase, at one point it sounded like good idea to jump on the nosql bandwagon.

It is a fantastic idea to call the index directly from the frontend and could be solved with a read only type of index or api key with read only scope.

The current design with an unnecessary security layer outside of Elasticsearch is a poor idea adding too much administrative overhead and ridiculous latency.

They have what you are looking for with their X-Pack Security addition, which requires a license, though under very favourable terms compared to others...

Hamburgers also don't have ham, you are missing the point.

I suggest checking out cloud.elastic.co if you want a way to securely query Elasticsearch directly from the browser without getting X-Pack