Release Notes - Database

Exasol 8 brings several new features, while some features that existed in previous versions have been altered or deprecated. The main features and changes introduced with Exasol 8 are described below. For an overview of the new architecture in Exasol 8, see What’s New in Exasol 8?.

For details of the changes introduced with each release of Exasol 8, see Released Versions.

Main Features

Separation of OS and software

Exasol no longer includes an operating system, but is instead provided as a software package that can be deployed on a public cloud platform or installed on a Linux system on your own hardware.

For more information, see What’s New in Exasol 8?.

Decoupling of storage and compute

For cloud deployments, the database persistent storage is moved from local discs to Object Storage, such as AWS S3. This architecture also enables multi-cluster support.

For more information, see Storage Management.

Multi-cluster support in cloud deployments

For cloud deployments, a database now supports multiple compute clusters operating on the same data. This enables you to split workloads on demand.

For more information, see Database Management.

TLS 1.3

TLS support is extended to TLS 1.3 and supports specifying a list of allowed ciphers.

For more information, see the change log.

New join order optimizer

The new join order optimizer, which was previously a preview feature, is now activated by default.

For more information, see the change log.

Enforced security defaults

Auditing is now activated by default in new deployments. New deployments are configured to only accept encrypted connections.

Zonemaps

Zonemaps is a new feature in Exasol 8 that can speed up the filtering process in queries.

For more information, see Zone maps.

Delayed Features

The following features are currently unavailable or limited in Exasol 8 but will be fully supported in upcoming releases. If you need this functionality and want to discuss the planned availability in Exasol 8, create a case.

  • Virtual access on database backup (legacy backup method for on-prem deployments)
  • Dual data center support

Changed Behavior

Python 2 is no longer delivered with the database. All Python UDFs should be migrated to Python 3 before updating.

Released Versions