Release notes

Firebolt continuously releases updates so that you can benefit from the latest and most stable service. These updates might happen daily, but we aggregate release notes to cover a longer time period for easier reference. The most recent release notes from the latest version are below.

• See the Release notes archive for earlier-version release notes.

Firebolt might roll out releases in phases. New features and changes may not yet be available to all accounts on the release date shown.

DB version 4.2

July 2024

• Release notes
  • DB version 4.2
    • New features
    • Breaking Changes
    • Enhancements, changes and new integrations

New features

New ntile window function

Firebolt now supports the ntile window function. Refer to our NTILE documentation for examples and usage.

Breaking Changes

Improved rounding precision for floating point to integer casting

Casting from floating point to integers now uses Banker’s Rounding, matching PostgreSQL’s behavior. This means that numbers that are equidistant from the two nearest integers are rounded to the nearest even integer:

Examples:

SELECT 0.5::real::int

This returns 0.

SELECT 1.5::real::int

This returns 2.

Rounding behavior has not changed for numbers that are strictly closer to one integer than to all others.

JSON functions update

Removed support for json_extract_raw, json_extract_array_raw, json_extract_values, and json_extract_keys. Updated json_extract function: the third argument is now path_syntax, which is a JSON pointer expression. See JSON_EXTRACT for examples and usage.

Cluster ordinal update

Replaced engine_cluster with cluster_ordinal in information_schema.engine_metrics_history. The new column is an integer representing the cluster number.

Configurable cancellation behavior on connection drop

Introduced the cancel_query_on_connection_drop setting, allowing clients to control query cancellation on HTTP connection drop. Options include NONE, ALL, and TYPE_DEPENDENT. Refer to system settings for examples and usage.

JSON format as default for error output

The HTTP API now returns query execution errors in JSON format by default. This change allows for the inclusion of meta information such as error codes and the location of failing expressions in SQL scripts.

STOP ENGINE will drain currently running queries first

STOP ENGINE command now supports graceful drain, meaning any currently running queries will be run to completion. Once all the queries are completed, the engine will be fully stopped and terminated. If you want to stop the engine immediately, you can issue a STOP ENGINE command use the TERMINATE option. For example, to immediately stop an engine, my_engine, you can use:

 STOP ENGINE myEngine WITH TERMINATE = TRUE

Scaling engines will not terminate currently running queries

ALTER ENGINE command now supports graceful drain, meaning when you scale an engine (vertically or horizontally), any currently running queries will not be terminated. New queries after the scaling operation will be directed to a new cluster, while queries running on the old cluster will be run to completion.

Updated RBAC ownership management

We have introduced several updates to role and privilege management:

• The security_admin role will be removed temporarily and re-introduced in a later release.
• Information_object_privileges includes more privileges. Switching to to a specific user database (e.g by executing use database db) will only show privileges relevant for that database. Account-level privileges no longer show up when attached to a specific database.
• Every newly created user is granted with a public role. This grant can be revoked.

Enhancements, changes and new integrations

Improved query performance

Queries with “SELECT [project_list] FROM [table] LIMIT [limit]” on large tables are now significantly faster.

Updated table level RBAC

Table level RBAC is now supported by Firebolt. This means that RBAC checks also cover schemas, tables, views and aggregating indexes. Refer to our RBAC docs for a detailed overview of this new feature. The new Firebolt version inhibits the following change:

• System built-in roles are promoted to contain table level RBAC information. This means that new privileges are added to account_admin, system_admin and public roles. The effect is transparent— any user assigned with those roles will not be affected.

Removal of Deprecated Columns from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ENGINES

We removed the following columns from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ENGINES that were only for FB 1.0 compatibility: region, spec, scale, warmup, and attached_to. These columns were always empty. (These columns are hidden and do not appear in SELECT * queries, but they will still work if referenced explicitly.)