New and changed in Vertica 12.0.1

• 1: admintools
• 2: Client drivers
• 3: Complex types
• 4: Containers and Kubernetes
• 5: Machine learning
• 6: Management Console
• 7: Performance improvements
• 8: S3 object store
• 9: Security and authentication
• 10: SQL functions and statements
• 11: Users and privileges

1 - admintools

stop_db and stop_subcluster graceful shutdown

When you run the admintools commands stop_db and stop_subcluster on an Eon Mode database, the default behavior is now to gracefully shut down the specified subclusters. Both commands provide override options that force immediate shutdown of the target subclusters.

For examples, see Stopping the database and Stopping a Subcluster.

Fast startup

The admintools command start_db has a new --fast option for starting Eon Mode databases. When invoked on an unencrypted database, Vertica uses startup information from cluster_config.json to expedite the startup process.

2 - Client drivers

OAuthJsonConfig precedence

The connection parameters oauthjsonconfig (ODBC) and OAuthJsonConfig (JDBC) now take precedence over the deprecated OAuth parameters:

• OAuthAccessToken/oauthaccesstoken

• OAuthRefreshToken/oauthrefreshtoken

• OAuthClientId/oauthclientid

• OAuthClientSecret/oauthclientsecret

• OAuthTokenUrl/oauthtokenurl

• OAuthDiscoveryUrl/oauthdiscoveryurl

• OAuthScope/oauthscope

3 - Complex types

Add new fields to complex type columns

Previously, Vertica did not allow you to change the fields of complex type columns in native tables. Now, you can add new fields to an existing complex type column using ALTER TABLE. See Adding a new field to a complex type column for details.

Field aliases in ROW literals

In ROW literals, you can now name individual fields using AS. The following two statements are equivalent:

=> SELECT ROW('Amy' AS name, 2 AS id, false AS current) AS student;

=> SELECT ROW('Amy', 2, false) AS student(name, id, current);

4 - Containers and Kubernetes

Elevate security context privileges for core files

The securityContext custom resource definition parameter can elevate Vertica server container privileges so that you can perform privileged actions, such as create core files that contain information about the Vertica server process.

For details, see Custom resource definition parameters and Metrics gathering. For additional details about security context, see the Kubernetes documentation.

Resize persistent volumes automatically on managed Kubernetes services

When you use a storageClass that allows volume expansion and you allocate depot storage with a percentage of the total disk space, the operator automatically adjusts the size of the PV and the depot when you update spec.local.requestSize.

For details, see Custom resource definition parameters.

Override helm chart object naming convention

The nameOverride Helm chart parameter sets the naming prefix for all objects that the Helm chart creates.

For details, see Helm chart parameters.

Java 8 support in the Vertica server image

The Vertica server image includes the Java 8 OpenJDK so that you can develop Java UDx and use the Java runtime in your Vertica environment.

For details about Java UDx development, see Java SDK. For a detailed list of Vertica images, see Containerized Vertica.

5 - Machine learning

Isolation forest

The APPLY_IFOREST function now supports a contamination parameter that specifies the approximate ratio of data points in the training data that are labeled as outliers. The function uses this contamination value to calculate an anomaly score threshold, a minimum limit that determines whether an input data point is marked as an outlier. You can set contamination instead of setting a threshold explicitly with the threshold parameter.

6 - Management Console

Eon Mode root volume encryption on AWS

On Eon Mode on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the root volume is encrypted by default when you perform any of the following operations with Management Console:

• Provision a database

• Revive a database

• Scale up a database

• Add a new subcluster

For details, see Amazon Web Services in MC and Subclusters in MC.

Support gp3 volume type on AWS

Vertica supports the gp3 volume type as the default volume type for root and EBS volumes on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The gp3 volume type is more cost-efficient and has better performance for input/output operations per second (IOPS) than the gp2 volume type. For details, see the Amazon gp3 product overview documentation.

Vertica uses gp3 volumes as the default volume type for the following operations in both Enterprise Mode and Eon Mode:

• Create a database

• Revive a database

• Add a subcluster

• Scale up a subcluster

  Note

  If the existing subcluster uses gp2 volumes, the scale-up operation adds gp2 volumes to the existing subcluster.

Additionally, the Vertica CloudFormation Template (CFT) uses the gp3 volume as the default volume type.

For details about Vertica on AWS, see the following:

• Vertica on Amazon Web Services
• Amazon Web Services in MC
• Subclusters in MC

AWS cluster creation i4i instance type support

Management Console now supports three AWS i4i instance types for database cluster creation. For configuration details, see Enterprise Mode volume configuration defaults for AWS and Eon Mode volume configuration defaults for AWS.

7 - Performance improvements

REFRESH_COLUMNS

Refreshing a SET USING column where SET USING is set to a constant value such as null has been optimized. Compared to previous releases, calling REFRESH_COLUMNS in REBUILD mode now performs significantly faster when it repopulates a SET USING column with constant values.

One exception applies: this optimization does not apply to SET USING subqueries such as SELECT null.

Backup/restore

Better manifest processing and garbage collection have significantly improved performance of vbr backup and restore operations.

8 - S3 object store

Server-side encryption (SSE)

Vertica now supports all three types of S3 server-side encryption: SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, and SSE-C. See S3 object store.

9 - Security and authentication

Custom TLS configurations

You can now create custom TLS Configurations and assign them to the following database parameters to secure different connection types:

• ServerTLSConfig

• HttpsTLSConfig

• LDAPLinkTLSConfig

• LDAPAuthTLSConfig

• InternodeTLSConfig

For details, see Security parameters.

InternodeTLSConfig TLSMODE

You can now set the TLSMODE for internode encryption with ALTER TLS CONFIGURATION.

For details on data channel TLS, see Data channel TLS.

10 - SQL functions and statements

CREATE and DROP TLS configurations

You can now create and drop TLS Configurations.

REFRESH_COLUMNS updates

The REFRESH_COLUMNS function now supports a Boolean flag that specifies whether to split ROS containers if the range of partition keys to refresh spans multiple containers or part of a single container. By default, this flag is set to true: split ROS containers as needed.

11 - Users and privileges

Expanded cryptographic privileges

Keys, certificates, and TLS Configurations now support granting and revoking privileges.

Superusers have limited privileges on cryptographic objects that they do not own. For details, see Database Object Privileges.

Cryptographic keys and certificates

You can now grant/revoke USAGE, DROP, and ALTER privileges on cryptographic keys.

You cannot explicitly grant privileges on certificates; rather, privileges on certificates comes from ownership or privileges on the underlying cryptographic key. For details, see GRANT (key).

TLS configurations

You can now grant/revoke DROP and USAGE privileges on TLS Configurations.