Release Notes 4.2

SQream is introducing a new version release system that follows the more commonly used Major.Minor.Patch versioning schema. The newly released 4.0 version is a minor version upgrade and does not require considerable preparation.

The 4.2 release notes were released on 04/23/2023 and describe the following:

New Features 

Apache Spark may now be used for large-scale data processing.

Physical deletion performance enhancement by supporting file systems with parallelism capabilities

Newly Released Connector Drivers 

► Pysqream 3.2.5

Supports Python version 3.9 and newer
.tar file
Documentation

► ODBC 4.4.4

Getting the ODBC Driver

► JDBC 4.5.8

► Spark 5.0.0

Compatibility Matrix 

System Requirement	Details
Supported OS	CentOS / REHL - 7.6 - 7.9 IBM RedHat 7.6
supported Nvidia driver	CUDA version from 10.1 up to 11.4.3
Storage version	46
Driver compatibility	JDBC 4.5.8 ODBC 4.4.4 NodeJS .NET 3.0.2 Pysqream 3.2.5 Spark

SQream Studio Updates and Improvements 

SQream Studio v5.5.4 has been released.

Known Issues 

Percentile is not supported for Window Functions.
Performance degradation when using VARCHAR partition key in a Window Functions expression

Version 4.2 Resolved Issues 

SQ No.	Description
SQ-12598	Foreign table `SELECT` statement issue
SQ-13018	cleanup_extent operation buffer issue
SQ-13055	Pysqream `NULL` value issue
SQ-13322	Clean up process is case sensitive
SQ-13450	Storage upgrade issue

Configuration Changes 

No configuration changes

Naming Changes 

No naming changes

Deprecated Features 

► INT96

Due to Parquet’s lack of support of the INT96 data type, SQream has decided to deprecate this data type.

► Square Brackets []

The [], which are frequently used to delimit identifiers such as column names, table names, and other database objects, will soon be deprecated to facilitate the use of the ARRAY data type.

Support in [] for delimiting database object identifiers ends on June 1st, 2023.
To delimit database object identifiers, you will be able to use double quotes "".

► VARCHAR

The VARCHAR data type is deprecated to improve the core functionalities of the platform and to align with the constantly evolving ecosystem requirements.

Support in the VARCHAR data type ends at September 30th, 2023.
VARCHAR is no longer supported for new customers, effective from Version 2022.1.3.
The TEXT data type is replacing the VARCHAR and NVARCHAR data types.

End of Support 

No End of Support changes were made.

Upgrading to v4.2 

Generate a back-up of the metadata by running the following command:
```
$ select backup_metadata('out_path');
```
Tip

SQream recommends storing the generated back-up locally in case needed.

SQream runs the Garbage Collector and creates a clean backup tarball package.
Shut down all SQream services.
Copy the recently created back-up file.
Replace your current metadata with the metadata you stored in the back-up file.
Navigate to the new SQream package bin folder.
Run the following command:
```
$ ./upgrade_storage <levelDB path>
```

Note

Upgrading from a major version to another major version requires you to follow the Upgrade Storage step. This is described in Step 7 of the Upgrading SQream Version procedure.