[Release] DataStax Python Driver 3.28.0 for Apache Cassandra

[DataStax Python Driver for Apache Cassandra User Mailing List]

Greetings!  Python Driver 3.28.0 for Apache Cassandra was released in early June of 2023 but apparently I missed sending out an update to the mailing list.  I'm filling that in now for sake of completeness.

This release several significant improvements.  First, we've added support for the vector type that is coming to Cassandra and is already supported in DataStax Astra.  You can find additional details in PYTHON-1352.

Also included in this release are a number of fixes for issues related to the implementation of column-level encryption (CLE) in the driver.  If you're using CLE you should definitely upgrade your applications to 3.28.0 to benefit from these fixes.  Note that the format of stored data has changed slightly, however, so if you do so you will need to re-encrypt any data that was encrypted with CLE after you upgrade to this version.

Finally, we've also changed the cryptography module used by the driver's CLE implementation into an optional dependency.  Cryptography is a fairly heavyweight module; if you weren't planning on using CLE there was no reason to require the installation of this module.  Consult the installation documentation for more details.

You can find the documentation for this releases here.  The full changelog for this release can be found here.

Many thanks to all who educated fellow community members, made feature requests, contributed code, wrote documentation, and reported bugs. We encourage you to get involved too:

Discuss the driver and ask questions:
  - python-driver-user mailing list: https://groups.google.com/a/lists.datastax.com/forum/#!forum/python-driver-user
  - Datastax Community: https://community.datastax.com/
Review and contribute source code and documentation:
  - Driver for Apache Cassandra: https://github.com/datastax/python-driver
  - Report issues on JIRA: https://datastax-oss.atlassian.net/browse/PYTHON

Thanks!

- Bret -