QuestDB 5.0.6 Release Highlights, January 2021

We've just released software version 5.0.6 and it comes with plenty of additional features and functionality, a full refactoring of PostgreSQL wire support, and multiple fixes to improve the stability of the system. Here's a roundup of recent changes that have just landed.

Improving PostgreSQL wire protocol support

The complete refactoring of PostgreSQL wire protocol, including binary support, means improved usability for many popular libraries and languages.

# insert 10 records
for x in range(10):
  now = dt.datetime.utcnow()
  date = dt.datetime.now().date()
  cursor.execute("""
    INSERT INTO trades
    VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s);
    """, (now, date, "python example", x))
# commit records
connection.commit()

Users can now use prepared statements (bind variables), which allows for better efficiency on repeated queries:

    // Prepared statement
    let mut txn = client.transaction()?;
    let statement = txn.prepare("insert into trades values ($1,$2,$3,$4)")?;
    for value in 0..10 {
        let utc = Utc::now();
        let sys_time = SystemTime::now();
        txn.execute(&statement, &[&utc.naive_local(), &sys_time, &name, &value])?;
    }
    txn.commit()?;

The documentation pages have more complete code examples which show how to insert data and query Data using popular tools and frameworks in Node, Go, Rust, Java and Python.

Adding Grafana alerting

Support for the RFC339Nano timestamp format enables the use of alerting via Grafana. This helps identify unintended changes, minimize disruptions and stay on top of your system or infrastructure:

Easily showing build details

There's now a function built-in that provides the current server version number and commit hash for troubleshooting. It can be run with the following command:

SELECT build();

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS

This language feature adds more flexibility in cases where CREATE TABLE queries are run and tables already exist:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS my_table (ts TIMESTAMP, value INT) timestamp(ts);

Full examples using this statement in multiple languages can be found on the PostgreSQL Reference page.

Error prevention when disk full

Even better than good error reporting is error prevention! This fix enhances the resilience of the system by preventing data loss in QuestDB instances if disk space unexpectedly runs out.

See more details on the release

These have been our top picks from the 5.0.6 release which cover what our users have been most excited about recently but there are a lot more changes that have been omitted here. For a full list of the fixes, features and improvements that we've added, take a look at the GitHub Release.

If you like our new additions or have a burning suggestion for upcoming changes, we'd love to know your thoughts! Feel free to share your feedback in our community forums and don't forget to drop us a star on GitHub.