entitymerge for identity_lookup_expanded doesn't produce any results

[gabriel_vasseur]

This is the search that merges identities, according to the search preview:

| inputlookup append=T "administrative_identity_lookup" 
| fillnull value="administrative_identities" _source 
| inputlookup append=T "simple_identity_lookup" 
| fillnull value="static_identities" _source 
| eval identity=split(identity, "|"),identity=if(_source=="administrative_identities", mvappend(identity,email,replace(email,"@.*","")), identity),identity=if(_source=="static_identities", mvappend(identity,email,replace(email,"@.*","")), identity),identity=mvjoin(mvdedup(identity), "|") 
| table "_source","bunit","category","email","endDate","first","last","managedBy","nick","phone","prefix","priority","startDate","suffix","watchlist","work_city","work_country","work_lat","work_long","identity" 
| eval `iden_mktime_meval(startDate)`,`iden_mktime_meval(endDate)`,identity=mvsort(identity) 
| sort 0 +identity 
| inputlookup append=T "identity_lookup_expanded" 
| entitymerge "identity"

If identity_lookup_expanded is empty (because I've flushed it), it produces results. If I pipe these results into an "outputlookup identity_lookup_expanded" it is populating identity_lookup_expanded ok (except all text is lowercase, but see my other question regarding that). Now if I run the above search again, it returns no results. It's ok until it hist entitymerge.

What does this mean?

[scelikok]

Hİ @gabriel_vasseur,

entitymerge command is supposed to add only new identities to prevent duplicates. That is why it is normal.

[gabriel_vasseur]

According to https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/ES/6.5.0/Admin/Searchpreview

"The results are the delta since the last merge. If nothing has changed in the source files since the last merge, you do not see any output."

That answers my question. This behaviour is really weird and unexpected! :-$