[Release] DataStax Python Driver Version 3.4.0

[Adam Holmberg]

Version 3.4.0 of the DataStax Python Driver has been released. This iteration brings a range of improvements refining driver feedback and reducing chances for misuse. A few new feature highlights:

- Cluster and Session now have context manager magic functions for streamlining code and exception handling with implicit shutdown (PYTHON-521)

- Host metadata now exposes DSE version and workload when connecting to a DSE cluster (PYTHON-555)

- Improved documentation and validation for initializing Statements with positional parameters (PYTHON-219)

A complete list of changes can be found in the changelog (reproduced below for your convenience).

Thanks to all who provided pull requests and bug reports for this release. Your engagement is appreciated.

Discuss the driver and ask questions:
     Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/a/lists.datastax.com/forum/#!forum/python-driver-user
     IRC: #datastax-drivers on irc.freenode.net
Review and contribute source code: https://github.com/datastax/python-driver/
Report issues on JIRA: https://datastax-oss.atlassian.net/browse/PYTHON

Regards,
Adam Holmberg

3.4.0

=====

May 24, 2016

Features

--------

*  Include DSE version and workload in Host data (PYTHON-555)

*  Add a context manager to Cluster and Session (PYTHON-521)

*  Better Error Message for Unsupported Protocol Version (PYTHON-157)

*  Make the error message explicitly state when an error comes from the server (PYTHON-412)

*  Short Circuit meta refresh on topo change if NEW_NODE already exists (PYTHON-557)

*  Show warning when the wrong config is passed to SimpleStatement (PYTHON-219)

*  Return namedtuple result pairs from execute_concurrent (PYTHON-362)

*  BatchStatement should enforce batch size limit in a better way (PYTHON-151)

*  Validate min/max request thresholds for connection pool scaling (PYTHON-220)

*  Handle or warn about multiple hosts with the same rpc_address (PYTHON-365)

*  Write docs around working with datetime and timezones (PYTHON-394)

Bug Fixes

--------

*  High CPU utilization when using asyncore event loop (PYTHON-239)

*  Fix CQL Export for non-ASCII Identifiers (PYTHON-447)

*  Make stress scripts Python 2.6 compatible (PYTHON-434)

*  UnicodeDecodeError when unicode characters in key in BOP (PYTHON-559)

*  WhiteListRoundRobinPolicy should resolve hosts (PYTHON-565)

*  Cluster and Session do not GC after leaving scope (PYTHON-135)

*  Don't wait for schema agreement on ignored nodes (PYTHON-531)

*  Reprepare on_up with many clients causes node overload (PYTHON-556)

*  None inserted into host map when control connection node is decommissioned (PYTHON-548)

*  weakref.ref does not accept keyword arguments (github #585)