Azure Cosmos DB Update Pattern : <p>I have recently started using Cosmos DB for a project and I am running into a few design issues. Coming from a SQL background, I understand that related data should be nested within documents on a NoSQL DB. This does mean that documents can become quite large though. </p>

<p>Since partial updates are not supported, what is the best design pattern to implement when you want to update a single property on a document? </p>

<p>Should I be reading the entire document server side, updating the value and writing the document back immeadiately in order to perform an update? This seems problematic if the documents are large which they inevitably would be if all your data is nested.</p>

<p>If I take the approach of making many smaller documents and infer relationships based on IDs I think this would solve the read/write immeadiately for updates concern but it feels like I am going against the concept of a NoSQL and in essence I am building a relational DB.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>
