Beta release 2016-04-07

[Ben Darnell]

A new beta release of CockroachDB is now available, beta-20160407. The download links on the installation instructions have been updated to point to the new release.

What's New in beta-20160407

Apr 7, 2016

BACKWARDS-INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES

• Any databases using the DECIMAL type will need to be deleted and created from scratch. Columns of this type were encoded incorrectly by beta-20160330. #5820
• SELECT statements must now specify specify one or more columns or expressions. Previously, statements such as SELECT FROM t were allowed but the results would confuse many clients. #5859
• It is now an error to insert a value that is too large into a column with a type of limited length such asVARCHAR(n). #5750

COMPATIBILITY

• Added support for the “flush” message in the PostgreSQL network protocol, which improves compatibility with the node.js driver. #5740
• Fixed a panic when handling certain queries sent by the PHP PDO library. #5783
• Improved parsing of timestamps for compatibility with the Go lib/pq client library. #5877

NEW FEATURES

• Index hints: SELECT FROM tbl@idx or SELECT FROM tbl@{FORCE_INDEX=idx} instructs the query planner to use the given index. #5785 and #5806
• The cockroach command-line client now accepts environment variables as default values for many command-line flags. See --help for details. #5430
• Added SQL version() function. #5763
• Added compiler and platform information to cockroach version output. #5766
• Debugging tools show fractional seconds in timestamps. #5736
• In secure mode, plain HTTP requests to the http-port used by the admin UI are now redirected to HTTPS.#5746
• Links to debugging pages are available on the HTTP port at /debug/. #5795
• The cockroach zone set command now echos the new configuration. #5829

BUG FIXES

• Improved flow control for raft snapshots, fixing an issue that could lead to nodes running out of memory.#5721
• Fixed a deadlock scenario in which two conflicting transactions would both be unable to make progress.#5710
• Fixed a panic while executing certain DELETE statements. #5840

INTERNAL CHANGES

• Clock offsets are now measured continuously. #5512
• Improved caching to avoid redundant range descriptor lookups. #5627
• Reduced log spam when nodes are down. #5883

CONTRIBUTORS

This release includes 77 merged PRs by 18 authors. We would like to thank the following contributors from the CockroachDB community, especially first-time contributor Seif Lotfy.

• Kenji Kaneda
• Seif Lotfy