Release Notes

FoundationDB Alpha 6

Platform support

  • FoundationDB now supports both clients and development servers on Mac OS X.
  • FoundationDB now supports both clients and development servers on (64-bit) Windows.
  • All language APIs are supported on Linux, Mac, and Windows (except for Ruby on Windows, because there is not a 64-bit Ruby for Windows.)

Features

  • The set of coordination servers can be safely changed on-the-fly via the CLI.
  • Unintentional deletion of the coordination state files is now ACID-safe and self-correcting when a majority of the state files still exist.
  • The foundationdb.conf file format has changed.
  • A new more flexible and automatic system for network configuration. Common server setups will auto-configure using the cluster file. More advanced setups are supported via separate configurable listen and public addresses.
  • The CLI now support tab-completion.
  • The CLI now supports setting transaction options
  • The CLI has a new command “getrangekeys” that returns the keys in a range and omits the values.
  • The database size estimate shown in the CLI status is much more accurate.

Performance

  • Improved latency performance for intense workloads with range-read operations.
  • Improved performance and decreased memory usage for certain intense write workloads targeting a small set of keys (such as sequential insert).

Fixes

  • An incorrect result could be returned by a range read when: (1) The range start was specified using a non-default “less than” type key selector; and (2) the range read started at the beginning of the database; and (3) the transaction also included a prior write to a key less than the key of the begin key selector.
  • In certain cases a FoundationDB cluster would not correctly re-configure itself to achieve a more optimal usage of servers of specific machine classes.

Changes to all APIs

  • The API version has been updated from 14 to 16. (Thanks to our API versioning technology, programs requesting API version 14 will work unmodified.)
  • Calling the reset method of a transaction now also resets transaction options.
  • System keys (those beginning with the byte 0xFF) are now inaccessible by default.
  • Simpler network setup: The network connection options are no longer necessary and have been deprecated.
  • Three new transaction options (READ_AHEAD_DISABLE, READ_YOUR_WRITES_DISABLE, and ACCESS_SYSTEM_KEYS) enable more control for advanced applications.

Changes to the Java API

  • A new construct AsyncUtil.whileTrue() simplifies writing loops using the asynchronous version of the Java FDB client.

Earlier release notes

For changes in alpha 5, see Release Notes (Alpha 5).