Release Notes: CockroachDB v2.1.0-alpha.20180507

General
#1

Happy Monday!

This release includes usability enhancements, postgres compatibility improvements, and general bug fixes.

Highlights
EXPORT CSV:
This feature allows you to quickly get data out of CockroachDB and into a format that can be ingested by downstream systems. Unlike the existing ability to export data via a SELECT that outputs to a CSV file syntax, EXPORT uses all nodes in the cluster to parallelize the CSV creation for significantly faster processing. Note that this is a prototype feature, so we’d love for you to try it out and create issues if you’d like any enhancements or find any bugs.

Upgrade your version of CockroachDB here and let us know what you think!
 
Cheers,

The Cockroach Labs Team

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General Changes

  • Added a debug endpoint that returns an anonymized diagnostics report. #24813
  • The header of new log files generated by cockroach start now includes the cluster ID once it has been determined. #24926
  • The cluster ID is also reported with tag [config] in the first log file, not only when log files are rotated. #24993
  • Stopped spamming the server logs with "error closing gzip response writer" messages. #25106
  • Enforced stricter validation of security certificates. #24687

Enterprise Edition Changes

  • Prototype support for EXPORT CSV. #25075

SQL Language Changes

  • The word "ROLE" is not a reserved keyword any more, which (re-)enables database and apps using that name for databases, tables and columns. #24629
  • The experimental SQL features to access KV range locations and move leaseholders now use the syntax SHOW EXPERIMENTAL_RANGES and ALTER ... EXPERIMENTAL_RELOCATE. #24696
  • The built-in functions current_schema and current_schemas now only consider valid schemas, like PostgreSQL does. #24718
  • The error message produced upon accessing a virtual schema with no database prefix (e.g. when database is not set) is now clarified. #24772
  • The error message produced upon object creation when there is no current database selected or only invalid schemas in search_path is now improved. #24770
  • CockroachDB now supports more ways to specify an index name for statements that require one (e.g., DROP INDEX, ALTER INDEX ... RENAME, etc.), in a way more compatible with PostgreSQL. #24778
  • The word stored can again be used to name databases, tables or columns without requiring clients to quote the identifier. #24554
  • Errors detected by SHOW SYNTAX are now tracked internally like other SQL errors. #24819
  • Added support for lpad and rpad string functions. #24891
  • Allow computed columns to be added with ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN. #24464
  • Added TIMETZ column type and datum. #24343
  • The EXPLAIN output for UPDATE statements now also report the check expressions, for consistency with INSERT. #23373
  • A minor optimization is introduced that reduces the amount of RAM used when a query performs further computations on the result of a mutation statement (INSERT/DELETE/UPSERT/UPSERT) combined with RETURNING. #23373
  • Add 'base64' option to the encode/decode builtins. #25002
  • IMPORT now supports hex-encoded byte literals for BYTES columns. #24859
  • Set Returning Functions (SRF) can now be accessed using (SRF).x where x is the name of a column returned form the SRF or a *. For example, SELECT (information_schema._pg_expandarray(ARRAY['c', 'b', 'a'])).x and SELECT (information_schema._pg_expandarray(ARRAY['c', 'b', 'a'])).* are both now valid syntax. Also, the naming of the resulting columns from SRFs has been updated to provide more information about the resulting tuple. #24832
  • Removed the METADATA, QUALIFY and EXPRS flags for EXPLAIN. #25101
  • CockroachDB now properly reports an error when a query attempts to use ORDER BY within a function argument list, which is an unsupported feature. #25146
  • AS OF SYSTEM TIME queries now accept a negative interval to produce a relative time from the statement's statement_timestamp() time. #24768

Command-Line Changes

  • Show admin UI URL in demo message. #24738
  • Fully support self and cyclic foreign key references in dump. #24716

Admin UI Changes

  • Update the window title for each page to make browser history more useful. #24634
  • Change label "bytes" to "used capacity" in nodes table #24843
  • Display the names of dropped schema objects on DROP DATABASE ... CASCADE #24852
  • The cluster overview now adjusts to take the advantage of the size of the screen. #24849
  • Fixes a bug where the node list could get cut off. #24849
  • The endpoint for diagnostic reports has been moved from /_admin/v1/diagnostics to /_status/diagnostics/{node_id} and you can now request the report from any node. #24997
  • Require web login if the environment variable COCKROACH_REQUIRE_WEB_LOGIN is set to true. #25057
  • Improve responsiveness of Prometheus metrics endpoint on very overloaded nodes. #25083
  • Time series charts now display data points at more consistent timestamps. #24856

Bug Fixes

  • Converted a panic related to an unsupported type to an error. #24688
  • ALTER INDEX ... RENAME can now be used on the primary index. #24776
  • Fixed a scenario in which a node could deadlock while starting up. #24808
  • CockroachDB now again allows to use a simply qualified table name in qualified stars (e.g., SELECT mydb.kv.* FROM kv), for compatibility with CockroachDB v1.x. #24811
  • Ranges in partitioned tables now properly split to respect their configured maximum size. #24896
  • Fixed a bug where SELECT * FROM [DELETE FROM ... RETURNING ...] LIMIT 1 or WITH d AS (DELETE FROM ... RETURNING ...) SELECT * FROM d LIMIT 1 would fail to properly delete some rows. #23373
  • Removed a limitation where UPDATE would fail if the number of modified rows was too large. #23373
  • Fixed a bug where SELECT * FROM [UPDATE ... RETURNING ...] LIMIT 1 or WITH d AS (UPDATE ... RETURNING ...) SELECT * FROM d LIMIT 1 would fail to properly update some rows. #23373
  • Removed a limitation where INSERT would fail if the number of inserted rows was too large. #23373
  • Fixed a bug where SELECT * FROM [INSERT ... RETURNING ...] LIMIT 1 or WITH d AS (INSERT ... RETURNING ...) SELECT * FROM d LIMIT 1 would fail to properly update some rows. #23373
  • Removed a limitation where UPSERT would fail if the number of modified rows was too large. #23373
  • UPSERT now properly reports the count of modified rows when RETURNING is not specified. #23373
  • Correctly verify columns can only by referencing by a single foreign key. Existing tables with a column that is used by multiple foreign key constraints should be manually changed to have at most one foreign key per column. #25060
  • The function documentation for the age() builtin was incorrect. This is now fixed. #25132
  • Fix PREPARE hanging when run in the same transaction as a CREATE TABLE. #23816

Performance Improvements

  • Improve performance of hash join #24577
  • Stream aggregations based on the ordering on the GROUP BY columns. #24113
  • Some SELECTs with limits no longer require a second low-level scan, resulting in much faster execution. #24790

Build Changes

  • Build metadata, like the commit SHA and build time, is properly injected into the binary when using Go 1.10 and building from a symlink. #25008

Doc Updates

Contributors

This release includes 224 merged PRs by 37 authors. We would like to thank the following contributors from the CockroachDB community, with special thanks to first-time contributors Bob Potter, Karan Vaidya, dchenk, and phelanm.

  • Bob Potter
  • Brett Snyder
  • Jingguo Yao
  • Karan Vaidya
  • Vijay Karthik
  • dchenk
  • phelanm
#2

This is exciting! Any idea when the DistSQL tickets will be implemented into 2.1?

#3

Any idea when can we expect cockroachDB v2.1.0 release version ? Is there any place where we can view the timelines ?

#4

The roadmap is available here (https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/wiki/Roadmap), but it doesn’t include a timeline. Let me find out and get back to you.

#5

Hi bladefist - can you be more specific? I’m not sure what you mean by “DistSQL tickets”

#6

@radu https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/milestone/13

If you ctrl+f “distsql” there are a bunch of tickets relating to improving execution over multiple servers. The main ticket I’m hyped for is: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues/24425

#7

@bladefist

thanks for tracking our progress for 2.1. :slight_smile:
Two things:

  • we are looking into indeed distributing window function processing for the 2.1 release. This is still planned but we have not yet made progress.
  • the “2.1” milestone on github is not a definite source of information. The “Roadmap” wiki page is more reliable; we have not yet propagated that information to the individual issues by tagging with the milestone label. Some issues tagged with the 2.1 milestone label are actually out of scope, and other issues that are in-scope are not tagged yet. We’ll be refining this tagging only towards the end of the release cycle (during summer).
1 Like
#8

Thanks! I’m sub’d to the tickets so I’ll keep waiting :slight_smile:

1 Like