NEWS.txt

0.8
===

Upgrading
---------
    - Upgrading from version 0.7.1 or later can be done with a rolling
      restart, one node at a time.  You do not need to bring down the
      whole cluster.
    - Avro record classes used in map/reduce and Hadoop streaming code have
      moved from org.apache.cassandra.avro to org.apache.cassandra.hadoop.avro,
      applications using these classes will need to be updated accordingly.
    - The loadbalance command has been removed from nodetool.  For similar
      behavior, decommission then rebootstrap with empty initial_token.
    - repair now works on a token range, rather than the entire ring. This
      means that "run repair against each node" will now repair the ring with
      no redundant work.

Features
--------
    - added CQL client API and JDBC/DBAPI2-compliant drivers for Java and
      Python, respectively (see: drivers/ subdirectory and doc/cql)
    - added distributed Counters feature; 
      see http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Counters
    - optional intranode encryption; see comments around 'encryption_options'
      in cassandra.yaml
    - compaction multithreading and rate-limiting; see 
      'compaction_multithreading' and 'compaction_throughput_mb_per_sec' in
      cassandra.yaml
    - cassandra will limit total memtable memory usage to 1/3 of the heap
      by default.  This can be ajusted or disabled with the 
      memtable_total_space_in_mb option.  The old per-ColumnFamily
      throughput, operations, and age settings are still respected but
      will be removed in a future major release once we are satisfied that
      memtable_total_space_in_mb works adequately.

Other
-----
    - In the past, sstable2json would write column names and values as
      hex strings, and now creates human readable values based on the
      comparator/validator.  As a result, JSON dumps created with
      older versions of sstable2json are no longer compatible with
      json2sstable, and imports must be made with a configuration that
      is identical to the export.
    - manually-forced compactions ("nodetool compact") will do nothing
      if only a single SSTable remains for a ColumnFamily. To force it
      to compact that anyway (which will free up space if there are
      a lot of expired tombstones), use the new forceUserDefinedCompaction
      JMX method on CompactionManager.

JMX
---
    - By default, JMX now listens on port 7199.


0.7.5
=====

Upgrading
---------
    - Nothing specific to 0.7.5, but see 0.7.3 Upgrading if upgrading
      from earlier than 0.7.1.

Changes
-------
    - system_update_column_family no longer snapshots before applying
      the schema change. (_update_keyspace never did.  _drop_keyspace
      and _drop_column_family continue to snapshot.)
    - added memtable_flush_queue_size option to cassandra.yaml to
      avoid blocking writes when multiple column families (or a colum
      family with indexes) are flushed at the same time.
    - allow overriding initial_token, storage_port and rpc_port using
      system properties


0.7.4
=====

Upgrading
---------
    - Nothing specific to 0.7.4, but see 0.7.3 Upgrading if upgrading
      from earlier than 0.7.1.

Features
--------
    - Output to Pig is now supported as well as input


0.7.3
=====

Upgrading
---------
    - 0.7.1 and 0.7.2 shipped with a bug that caused incorrect row-level
      bloom filters to be generated when compacting sstables generated
      with earlier versions.  This would manifest in IOExceptions during
      column name-based queries.  0.7.3 provides "nodetool scrub" to 
      rebuild sstables with correct bloom filters, with no data lost.
      (If your cluster was never on 0.7.0 or earlier, you don't have to
      worry about this.)  Note that nodetool scrub will snapshot your
      data files before rebuilding, just in case.


0.7.1
=====

Upgrading
---------
    - 0.7.1 is completely backwards compatible with 0.7.0.  Just restart
      each node with the new version, one at a time.  (The cluster does
      not all need to be upgraded simultaneously.)

Features
--------
    - added flush_largest_memtables_at and reduce_cache_sizes_at options
      to cassandra.yaml as an escape valve for memory pressure
    - added option to specify -Dcassandra.join_ring=false on startup
      to allow "warm spare" nodes or performing JMX maintenance before
      joining the ring

Performance
-----------
    - Disk writes and sequential scans avoid polluting page cache
      (requires JNA to be enabled)
    - Cassandra performs writes efficiently across datacenters by
      sending a single copy of the mutation and having the recipient
      forward that to other replicas in its datacenter.
    - Improved network buffering
    - Reduced lock contention on memtable flush
    - Optimized supercolumn deserialization
    - Zero-copy reads from mmapped sstable files
    - Explicitly set higher JVM new generation size
    - Reduced i/o contention during saving of caches


0.7.0
=====

Features
--------
    - Secondary indexes (indexes on column values) are now supported
    - Row size limit increased from 2GB to 2 billion columns.  rows
      are no longer read into memory during compaction.
    - Keyspace and ColumnFamily definitions may be added and modified live
    - Streaming data for repair or node movement no longer requires 
      anticompaction step first
    - NetworkTopologyStrategy (formerly DatacenterShardStrategy) is ready for 
      use, enabling ConsistencyLevel.DCQUORUM and DCQUORUMSYNC.  See comments 
      in `cassandra.yaml.`
    - Optional per-Column time-to-live field allows expiring data without
      have to issue explicit remove commands
    - `truncate` thrift method allows clearing an entire ColumnFamily at once
    - Hadoop OutputFormat and Streaming [non-jvm map/reduce via stdin/out]
      support
    - Up to 8x faster reads from row cache
    - A new ByteOrderedPartitioner supports bytes keys with arbitrary content,
      and orders keys by their byte value.  This should be used in new
      deployments instead of OrderPreservingPartitioner.
    - Optional round-robin scheduling between keyspaces for multitenant
      clusters
    - Dynamic endpoint snitch mitigates the impact of impaired nodes
    - New `IntegerType`, faster than LongType and allows integers of 
      both less and more bits than Long's 64
    - A revamped authentication system that decouples authorization and 
      allows finer-grained control of resources.

Upgrading
---------
    The Thrift API has changed in incompatible ways; see below, and refer
    to http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/ClientOptions for a list of
    higher-level clients that have been updated to support the 0.7 API.

    The Cassandra inter-node protocol is incompatible with 0.6.x
    releases (and with 0.7 beta1), meaning you will have to bring your
    cluster down prior to upgrading: you cannot mix 0.6 and 0.7 nodes.
    
    The hints schema was changed from 0.6 to 0.7. Cassandra automatically
    snapshots and then truncates the hints column family as part of 
    starting up 0.7 for the first time.

    Keyspace and ColumnFamily definitions are stored in the system
    keyspace, rather than the configuration file.

    The process to upgrade is:
    1) run "nodetool drain" on _each_ 0.6 node.  When drain finishes (log
       message "Node is drained" appears), stop the process.
    2) Convert your storage-conf.xml to the new cassandra.yaml using 
       "bin/config-converter".  
    3) Rename any of your keyspace or column family names that do not adhere
       to the '^\w+' regex convention.
    4) Start up your cluster with the 0.7 version.
    5) Initialize your Keyspace and ColumnFamily definitions using 
       "bin/schematool <host> <jmxport> import".  _You only need to do 
       this to one node_.

Thrift API
----------
    - The Cassandra server now defaults to framed mode, rather than
      unframed.  Unframed is obsolete and will be removed in the next
      major release.
    - The Cassandra Thrift interface file has been updated for Thrift 0.5.
      If you are compiling your own client code from the interface, you
      will need to upgrade the Thrift compiler to match.
    - Row keys are now bytes: keys stored by versions prior to 0.7.0 will be
      returned as UTF-8 encoded bytes. OrderPreservingPartitioner and
      CollatingOrderPreservingPartitioner continue to expect that keys contain
      UTF-8 encoded strings, but RandomPartitioner now works on any key data.
    - keyspace parameters have been replaced with the per-connection
      set_keyspace method.
    - The return type for login() is now AccessLevel.
    - The get_string_property() method has been removed.
    - The get_string_list_property() method has been removed.

Configuraton
------------
    - Configuration file renamed to cassandra.yaml and log4j.properties to
      log4j-server.properties
    - PropertyFileSnitch configuration file renamed to 
      cassandra-topology.properties
    - The ThriftAddress and ThriftPort directives have been renamed to
      RPCAddress and RPCPort respectively.
    - EndPointSnitch was renamed to RackInferringSnitch.  A new SimpleSnitch
      has been added.
    - RackUnawareStrategy and RackAwareStrategy have been renamed to
      SimpleStrategy and OldNetworkTopologyStrategy, respectively.
    - RowWarningThresholdInMB replaced with in_memory_compaction_limit_in_mb
    - GCGraceSeconds is now per-ColumnFamily instead of global
	- Keyspace and column family names that do not confirm to a '^\w+' regex
      are considered illegal.
    - Keyspace and column family definitions will need to be loaded via
      "bin/schematool <host> <jmxport> import".  _You only need to do this to
      one node_.
    - In addition to an authenticator, an authority must be configured as
      well. Users of SimpleAuthenticator should use SimpleAuthority for this
      value (the default is AllowAllAuthority, which corresponds with 
      AllowAllAuthenticator).
    - The format of access.properties has changed, see the sample configuration
      conf/access.properties for documentation on the new format.


JMX
---
    - StreamingService moved from o.a.c.streaming to o.a.c.service
    - GMFD renamed to GOSSIP_STAGE
    - {Min,Mean,Max}RowCompactedSize renamed to {Min,Mean,Max}RowSize
      since it no longer has to wait til compaction to be computed

Other
-----
    - If extending AbstractType, make sure you follow the singleton pattern
      followed by Cassandra core AbstractType classes: provide a public
      static final variable called 'instance'.


0.6.6
=====

Upgrading
---------
    - As part of the cache-saving feature, a third directory
      (along with data and commitlog) has been added to the config
      file.  You will need to set and create this directory
      when restarting your node into 0.6.6.


0.6.1
=====

Upgrading
---------
    - We try to keep minor versions 100% compatible (data format,
      commitlog format, network format) within the major series, but
      we introduced a network-level incompatibility in 0.6.1.
      Thus, if you are upgrading from 0.6.0 to any higher version
      (0.6.1, 0.6.2, etc.) then you will need to restart your entire
      cluster with the new version, instead of being able to do a
      rolling restart.


0.6.0
=====

Features
--------
    - row caching: configure with the RowsCached attribute in
      ColumnFamily definition
    - Hadoop map/reduce support: see contrib/word_count for an example
    - experimental authentication support, described under
      Authenticator in storage.conf

Configuraton
------------
    - MemtableSizeInMB has been replaced by MemtableThroughputInMB which
      triggers a memtable flush when the specified amount of data has 
      been written, including overwrites.
    - MemtableObjectCountInMillions has been replaced by the
      MemtableOperationsInMillions directive which causes a memtable flush
      to occur after the specified number of operations.
    - Like MemtableSizeInMB, BinaryMemtableSizeInMB has been replaced by
      BinaryMemtableThroughputInMB.
    - Replication factor is now per-keyspace, rather than global.
    - KeysCachedFraction is deprecated in favor of KeysCached
    - RowWarningThresholdInMB added, to warn before very large rows
      get big enough to threaten node stability

Thrift API
----------
    - removed deprecated get_key_range method
    - added batch_mutate meethod
    - deprecated multiget and batch_insert methods in favor of
      multiget_slice and batch_mutate, respectively
    - added ConsistencyLevel.ANY, for when you want write
      availability even when it may not be readable immediately.
      Unlike CL.ZERO, though, it will throw an exception if
      it cannot be written *somewhere*.

JMX metrics
-----------
    - read and write statistics are reported as lifetime totals,
      instead of averages over the last minute.  average-since-last
      requested are also available for convenience.
    - cache hit rate statistics are now available from JMX under
      org.apache.cassandra.db.Caches
    - compaction JMX metrics are moved to
      org.apache.cassandra.db.CompactionManager.  PendingTasks is now
      a much better estimate of compactions remaining, and the
      progress of the current compaction has been added.
    - commitlog JMX metrics are moved to org.apache.cassandra.db.Commitlog
    - progress of data streaming during bootstrap, loadbalance, or other
      data migration, is available under 
      org.apache.cassandra.streaming.StreamingService.
      See http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Streaming for details.

Installation/Upgrade
--------------------
    - 0.6 network traffic is not compatible with earlier versions.  You
      will need to shut down all your nodes at once, upgrade, then restart.



0.5.0
=====

0. The commitlog format has changed (but sstable format has not). 
   When upgrading from 0.4, empty the commitlog either by running 
   bin/nodeprobe flush on each machine and waiting for the flush to finish,
   or simply remove the commitlog directory if you only have test data.
   (If more writes come in after the flush command, starting 0.5 will error
   out; if that happens, just go back to 0.4 and flush again.)
   The format changed twice: from 0.4 to beta1, and from beta2 to RC1.

.5 The gossip protocol has changed, meaning 0.5 nodes cannot coexist
   in a cluster of 0.4 nodes or vice versa; you must upgrade your
   whole cluster at the same time.

1. Bootstrap, move, load balancing, and active repair have been added.
   See http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Operations.  When upgrading
   from 0.4, leave autobootstrap set to false for the first restart
   of your old nodes.

2. Performance improvements across the board, especially on the write
   path (over 100% improvement in stress.py throughput).

3. Configuration:
     - Added "comment" field to ColumnFamily definition.
     - Added MemtableFlushAfterMinutes, a global replacement for the 
       old per-CF FlushPeriodInMinutes setting
     - Key cache settings

4. Thrift:
     - Added get_range_slice, deprecating get_key_range



0.4.2
=====

1. Improve default garbage collector options significantly --
   throughput will be 30% higher or more.



0.4.1
=====

1. SnapshotBeforeCompaction configuration option allows snapshotting
   before each compaction, which allows rolling back to any version
   of the data.



0.4.0
=====

1. On-disk data format has changed to allow billions of keys/rows per
   node instead of only millions.  The new format is incompatible with 0.3;
   see 0.3 notes below for how to import data from a 0.3 install.

2. Cassandra now supports multiple keyspaces.  Typically you will have
   one keyspace per application, allowing applications to be able to
   create and modify ColumnFamilies at will without worrying about
   collisions with others in the same cluster.

3. Many Thrift API changes and documentation.  See 
   http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/API

4. Removed the web interface in favor of JMX and bin/nodeprobe, which
   has significantly enhanced functionality.

5. Renamed configuration "<Table>" to "<Keyspace>".

6. Added commitlog fsync; see "<CommitLogSync>" in configuration.



0.3.0
=====

1. With enough and large enough keys in a ColumnFamily, Cassandra will
   run out of memory trying to perform compactions (data file merges).
   The size of what is stored in memory is (S + 16) * (N + M) where S
   is the size of the key (usually 2 bytes per character), N is the
   number of keys and M, is the map overhead (which can be guestimated
   at around 32 bytes per key).
   So, if you have 10-character keys and 1GB of headroom in your heap
   space for compaction, you can expect to store about 17M keys
   before running into problems.
   See https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-208

2. Because fixing #1 requires a data file format change, 0.4 will not
   be binary-compatible with 0.3 data files.  A client-side upgrade
   can be done relatively easily with the following algorithm:
     for key in old_client.get_key_range(everything):
         columns = old_client.get_slice or get_slice_super(key, all columns)
     new_client.batch_insert or batch_insert_super(key, columns)
   The inner loop can be trivially parallelized for speed.

3. Commitlog does not fsync before reporting a write successful.
   Using blocking writes mitigates this to some degree, since all
   nodes that were part of the write quorum would have to fail
   before sync for data to be lost.
   See https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-182

Additionally, row size (that is, all the data associated with a single
key in a given ColumnFamily) is limited by available memory, because
compaction deserializes each row before merging.

See https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-16