What's the best Mongo index strategy that includes a date range - mongodb

Question

I have the following schema:
{
a: string;
b: date;
c: number;
}
My query is
find({
a: 'some value',
b: {
$gte: new Date('some date')
}
})
.sort({
c: -1
});
I have an index that is:
{ a: 1, b: 1, c: 1 }
But it's not using this index.
I have several other indexes, and when analyzing my explain(), it shows it's employing multiple other indexes to accomplish my query.
I believe since my "b" query is a date range, that's not considered an equality condition, so maybe that index won't work?
Should I have two indexes:
{ a: 1, c: 1} and separately { b: 1 }

Answer 1

Dates tend to be much more selective than other fields, so when you have an index that looks like {dateField: 1, otherField: 1}, the selectivity of the dateField means that otherField will be useless unless you have multiple items that share the same date.
Depending on what your data distribution actually looks like, you might consider {otherField: 1, dateField: 1} (which means that mongo can go through in sorted order to check whether the docs match your date query). In general, putting your sort field before any fields used in a range query is a good idea.
Mlab's indexing docs are the best resource I've seen on index usage, and they recommend:
A good rule of thumb for queries with sort is to order the indexed fields in this order:
First, the field(s) on which you will query for exact values
Second, one small $in array
Third, the field(s) on which you will sort in the same order and specification as the sort itself (sorting on multiple fields)
Finally, the field(s) on which you will query for a range of values in the order of most selective to least selective (see range operators below)