Phillip LeBlanc

53 releases since Spice 1.0-stable, Spice.ai OSS has reached the 2.0-stable milestone! 🎉

Spice v2.0.0 is the next major release of Spice and a major milestone in the project's development, advancing Spice from a single-node engine into a distributed data and query platform built for enterprise AI agents. These agents need low-latency, governed access to data spread across many production systems, and because they generate their own queries autonomously, that access has to be sandboxed, observable, and able to absorb occasional heavy analytical queries without overwhelming the underlying systems. The release is headlined by multi-node distributed query, now generally available — multi-active, highly-available, and object-store-native, built on Apache Ballista — distributing both query execution and ingestion across executors with data-local routing and per-executor statistics for distributed join planning. Alongside it, the Spice Cayenne data accelerator is generally available, built on the Vortex compressed columnar format, with a high-throughput CDC write path, MERGE INTO, SQL-defined partitioning, inline writes, a dedicated compaction runtime, and write-path statistics for distributed join sizing. The engine also moves to DataFusion v52 with sort pushdown, a rewritten merge join, and dynamic filters, and the Spice CLI is rewritten in Rust as a single self-contained binary.

v2.0 also expands real-time and write-path capabilities across the platform: native CDC from MongoDB Change Streams and PostgreSQL WAL logical replication, durable Kafka CDC offsets, DML write-back for PostgreSQL, Snowflake, DynamoDB, Arrow, and DuckLake, DDL and MERGE INTO for Iceberg catalogs, mutual TLS across server endpoints and outbound connectors, HashiCorp Vault and Azure Key Vault secret stores, user-defined functions, hybrid search with Elasticsearch and DuckDB HNSW vector indexes, provider-aware LLM prompt caching, and the Responses API across all model providers.

Highlights in v2.0.0 include:​

• Spice Cayenne (GA) — generally available on the Vortex compressed columnar format, with WAL-staged writes, inline low-latency writes, fast-path CDC deletes, merge-on-read position deletes, composite & SQL-defined partitioning, MERGE INTO, dedicated compaction runtime, and join-sizing statistics maintained on the write path
• Multi-Active HA Distributed Query (GA) — multi-node distributed query built on Apache Ballista, with object-store-native clustering, dynamic cluster sizing, distributed ingestion, data-local query routing, per-executor table statistics for distributed join planning, and async queries via /v1/queries
• Mutual TLS (mTLS) — public mTLS for HTTP and Flight, TLS cert hot-reload, and mTLS client certificates for FlightSQL and Spice.ai connectors
• Enterprise Authentication & Authorization — OIDC bearer-token verification and Cedar-based authorization policy with per-principal row- and column-level filtering
• New Secret Stores — HashiCorp Vault and Azure Key Vault
• CDC Sources — native MongoDB Change Streams, PostgreSQL WAL logical replication, and durable Kafka CDC offsets — no Debezium or Kafka middleware required
• DML & DDL — INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE write-back for PostgreSQL, Snowflake, DynamoDB, and Arrow; CREATE TABLE/DROP TABLE and MERGE INTO for Iceberg catalogs
• User-Defined Functions — SQL UDFs in spicepods, remote UDFs over HTTP, and optional geospatial ST_* UDFs
• On-Demand Dataset Loading & Unified Query Cancellation — faster startup and end-to-end cancellation across HTTP, Flight, FlightSQL, and MCP
• Dynamic HTTP Connector — OAuth2 refresh tokens, pagination, dynamic headers, subquery-driven parameters, and rate-control state persisted across restarts
• Storage-Profile Accelerator Tuning & refresh_mode: snapshot — storage-aware acceleration defaults and point-in-time snapshot acceleration
• Search & Vectors — Elasticsearch data connector with native hybrid search, DuckDB HNSW vector engine with a statically linked VSS extension, multi-vector MaxSim embeddings, and a rerank() UDTF
• AI & LLM — provider-aware prompt caching, Responses API across all providers, MCP Streamable HTTP transport, and a searchable LLM tool registry
• New Data Connectors — Elasticsearch (Alpha), GCS (Alpha), Azure Cosmos DB (Alpha), Git (RC), ADBC, DuckLake (Beta), and catalog connectors for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, and Snowflake
• Rust CLI — single-binary spice CLI with spice query async REPL, shell completions, and --output=json
• Dependency upgrades including DataFusion v52.5, DuckDB v1.5.3, Arrow v57.2, iceberg-rust v0.9.1, Turso v0.6.1, and Vortex v0.69

Spice v2.0 includes several breaking changes. Review the breaking changes section before upgrading.

Distribution Changes​

AI/ML support including local LLM/ML model and hosted LLM inference is now included in the default Spice build and image. The separate models build variant has been removed.

With models now included by default, the data-only distribution (without AI/ML support) is only published in nightly builds. Official production-ready data-only distributions are available exclusively through Spice Cloud and the Enterprise release.

A new Network Attached Storage (NAS) distribution with built-in SMB and NFS data connector support is also available in nightly builds and with Spice.ai Enterprise.

Native Windows builds are no longer provided; use WSL for local development. For more details, see the Distributions documentation.

What's New in v2.0.0​

Spice Cayenne Reaches General Availability​

The Spice Cayenne data accelerator is generally available in v2.0, with a major focus across the release candidates on write-path throughput, correctness, and distributed operation.

Write path & ingest:

• Staged Append Writes: WAL-based staged append writes prevent partial writes and data loss on stream errors — batches commit atomically.
• Inline Writes: Small writes are serialized as Arrow IPC and committed directly into the Cayenne metastore, bypassing the staged Vortex write path for low-latency ingest. Inline upserts atomically rewrite existing inline rows, inline data stays query-visible via an in-memory union scan, and rows are checkpointed to Vortex when thresholds are reached. Inline writes now also proceed with pending deletions in flight, and inline flush caps scale with available memory and storage class.
• Fast-Path CDC Deletes: DELETE statements whose filters identify primary keys directly — including composite keys expressed as (k1, k2) IN ((...), (...)) — skip the table scan entirely.
• Merge-On-Read Position Deletes: Primary-key upsert tables use position deletes with memory-pool accounting, avoiding full-table rewrites on update-heavy workloads.
• Resident Upsert Keysets: CDC upsert primary-key keysets stay resident between batches, avoiding per-batch full-table rebuilds.
• CDC Sub-Batch Efficiency: Interleaved upsert/delete workloads produce fewer sub-batch splits, with last-write-wins deduplication applied within batches.
• Dedicated Compaction Runtime: Background compaction runs on a dedicated thread pool with CDC pipelining and protected snapshots, isolating compaction work from query and ingest paths.

Query & planning:

• Join Filter Propagation: Filters propagate across equi-join keys, with range fallback for large join filters and IN-list rewrites.
• Write-Path Join-Sizing Statistics: Cayenne maintains live row counts and HyperLogLog-based distinct-value estimates on the write path, so distributed JoinSelection can correctly size joins without rescans.
• Scan-Result Cache: A new scan-result cache accelerates hot reads, with parallel Vortex partition writes and lock-free deletion caches with bloom-prefiltered probes.

SQL & catalog:

• MERGE INTO: Upsert-style MERGE INTO for Cayenne catalog tables, distributed across executors in cluster mode.
• PARTITION BY in SQL: Define partitioning directly in CREATE TABLE ... PARTITION BY (...); metadata is persisted in the catalog and survives restarts.
• Composite Partitioning: partition_by: [col1, col2] with hierarchical path-like keys.
• File-Based Retention Deletes: Time-based retention uses file-level deletes for both position-based and primary-key tables.

Correctness: Synchronized partition commits, correct NULL-sentinel handling for nullable partition expressions, tombstoned inline-checkpointed rows on upsert (preventing duplicate primary keys), and live reads through expired protected snapshots.

Multi-Active HA Distributed Query (GA)​

Spice.ai Enterprise feature. See High Availability.

Distributed Query is generally available. Built on Apache Ballista, it distributes query execution across multiple active executor nodes with no single point of failure, reading directly from object storage rather than relying on a central cluster.

Distributed query supports two execution modes:

• Synchronous: Queries for accelerated datasets are distributed across executors and results stream back in real-time — best for interactive, latency-sensitive queries.
• Asynchronous: Queries submitted via the HTTP /v1/queries API materialize results to object storage for later retrieval — best for long-running analytical and batch workloads.

Key capabilities:

• Dynamic Cluster Sizing: The planner adjusts parallelism to the number of active executors as nodes join or leave.
• Distributed Ingestion: Ingestion for partitioned accelerated tables is distributed across executors, with partition-aware write-through splitting scheduler-side Flight DoPut writes to the responsible executors.
• Data-Local Query Routing: Cayenne catalog queries route to the executors holding the relevant partitions.
• Per-Executor Table Statistics: Executors report table statistics — including NDV-aware estimates — so distributed JoinSelection can size joins correctly, fixing out-of-memory conditions on large semi-joins.
• Readiness & Failure Detection: /v1/ready gates on a configurable executor quorum for safe rolling deployments; scheduler readiness additionally waits for executor partition loads; executor heartbeat timeout reduced from 180s to 30s.
• Distributed DML & DDL: UPDATE/DELETE forwarding to all executors, executor DDL sync for late joiners, and distributed MERGE INTO.
• Cluster Observability: New cluster metrics (including scheduler_active_executors_count), distributed runtime.task_history replication, and a Grafana dashboard.
• Ballista S3 Shuffle: Async queries with runtime.params.shuffle_location: s3://... complete reliably with executor-environment-derived S3 clients.

Security: Mutual TLS, Secret Stores, and Hardening​

Several capabilities in this section are Spice.ai Enterprise features. See Enterprise Security.

Mutual TLS across the platform:

• Public mTLS for HTTP and Flight: client_auth_mode: request (optional, for migration windows) or required (strict) client-certificate verification.
• TLS Cert Hot-Reload: The runtime reloads TLS certificates on SIGHUP for zero-downtime rotation.
• Outbound mTLS Client Certificates: FlightSQL and Spice.ai data connectors present client certificates to upstream services; the spice sql REPL supports mTLS client auth.

runtime:
  tls:
    enabled: true
    certificate_file: /etc/spice/tls/server.crt
    key_file: /etc/spice/tls/server.key
    client_auth_mode: required
    client_auth_ca_file: /etc/spice/tls/client-ca.crt

Authentication & Authorization (Spice.ai Enterprise):

• OIDC Authentication: Validate OIDC bearer tokens (JWTs) issued by enterprise identity providers — Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, Auth0, AWS Cognito, and Google — for secure access to runtime endpoints, standalone or combined with API keys.
• Principal-Based Policy Enforcement: Fine-grained, Cedar-based authorization policy configured under runtime.authorization governs allow/deny access across datasets, models, tools, and endpoints. Combined with identity SQL functions (current_principal(), current_principal_email(), current_principal_groups()), policies enforce per-principal row-level filtering and column masking.

New Secret Stores: HashiCorp Vault (KV v1/v2; token, approle, kubernetes, and jwt auth with automatic lease renewal) and Azure Key Vault (service principal, managed identity, workload identity, Azure CLI, or auto-detect; sovereign cloud support).

Hardening:

• Read-only API Key Enforcement on the Flight DoGet path and async query endpoints.
• Per-Principal Cache Namespacing: SQL, search, and caching-accelerator caches are namespaced per authenticated principal so cached results never cross identity boundaries.
• API Key Timing Leak & Remote-UDF SSRF: Closed a timing-based position-disclosure leak in API key comparison and blocked SSRF via remote UDF endpoints.
• Snowflake Function Deny-List: A function deny-list is enforced in Snowflake federation pushdown, and Snowflake account identifiers and auth configuration are validated at startup.
• MCP allowed_hosts: MCP servers can be restricted to an explicit allowlist of upstream hosts.

Change Data Capture (CDC) Sources​

See Change Data Capture (CDC) for an overview of CDC in Spice.

• MongoDB Change Streams: MongoDB datasets with refresh_mode: changes stream changes natively into any local accelerator — no Debezium or Kafka required.
• PostgreSQL Native Replication (WAL): PostgreSQL datasets stream INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE directly from logical replication using pgoutput decoding, with automatic per-replica slot management, an initial REPEATABLE READ bootstrap snapshot, and durable LSN acknowledgement.
• Kafka CDC Offset Persistence: Kafka CDC offsets persist in sidecar tables for durable, resumable streams across restarts and failovers.
• Pipelined CDC Ingestion: Source reads overlap with batch apply, with envelope coalescing and improved nullability propagation.
• Debezium Schema Evolution: Schema changes in Debezium-sourced datasets no longer break dataset initialization on reload.

datasets:
  - from: postgres:my_table
    name: my_table
    params:
      pg_host: localhost
      pg_db: mydb
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      refresh_mode: changes

DML, DDL, and Write-Back​

Spice v2.0 turns more connectors and catalogs into full read/write tables:

• PostgreSQL DML: INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE write-back on PostgreSQL datasets, with foreign-key metadata exposed via the PostgreSQL catalog connector.
• Snowflake DML: INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE write-back on Snowflake datasets.
• DynamoDB DML: INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE for DynamoDB, complementing read and CDC streaming.
• Arrow Primary Key Upserts: Native update-or-insert semantics for in-memory Arrow-accelerated tables.
• DDL for Iceberg: CREATE TABLE and DROP TABLE via FlightSQL and /v1/sql for Iceberg, with catalog.access: read_write_create.
• DuckLake INSERT: DuckLake catalog tables with read_write access support INSERT.

SQL & User-Defined Functions​

See the SQL Reference for the full SQL surface area.

• User-Defined Functions: Define reusable SQL UDFs as first-class spicepod components, or invoke remote functions over HTTP (Spice.ai Enterprise), plus table user functions.
• Spatial SQL UDFs: Optional geospatial ST_* UDFs for geometry workloads.
• JSON UDTFs: flatten_json, json_tree, and flatten_json_properties table-valued functions for JSON transformation and schema decomposition (with options such as expand_maps). See JSON Functions and Operators.
• PostgreSQL Metadata UDFs: Dataset and column descriptions are exposed via PostgreSQL-compatible UDFs (obj_description, col_description), so BI tools and psql surface Spice metadata.
• FlightSQL Substrait Plans: CommandStatementSubstraitPlan support for clients submitting Substrait-encoded plans.
• SQL REPL Expanded View: Toggle \x for a vertical key-value layout on wide result sets.
• Prepared statement, federation, and unparsing fixes across the engine, including keeping correlated subqueries out of JOIN ON conditions for Spice Cloud federation and correct EXISTS/NOT EXISTS subquery handling in the federation analyzer.

Runtime Features​

• On-Demand Dataset Loading: Datasets can be deferred — registered with a declared schema at startup (columns[].type, columns[].nullable) and fully resolved on first reference, reducing startup time and memory for large spicepods.
• Unified Query Cancellation: HTTP, Flight, FlightSQL, MCP, and internal execution paths honour a unified cancellation signal — disconnects, REPL Ctrl-C, and cancelled HTTP requests cancel the query end-to-end.
• Storage-Profile Accelerator Tuning: acceleration.storage_profile (auto, local_ssd, ebs, tmpfs) applies storage-aware defaults across DuckDB, SQLite, Turso, and Cayenne file-mode accelerators; auto detects the backing storage.
• refresh_mode: snapshot (Spice.ai Enterprise): Point-in-time snapshot acceleration with SQLite/Turso WAL flushing and Cayenne metastore slice integration, now reporting accurate readiness when no snapshot exists yet.
• Structured Component Errors: /v1/datasets?status=true and /v1/models?status=true return structured error objects (category, type, code) and human-readable error_message fields; the CLI shows an ERROR column.
• Actionable Config Errors: Parameter typos, missing secret references, and unknown engine names produce specific, actionable errors with suggestions.

Spicepod v2​

Spicepods now support version: v2, the default for spice init, while v1 spicepods continue to work with automatic migration of deprecated fields.

New v2 fields include runtime.ready_state, runtime.query.spill_compression, runtime.caching.sql_results.stale_while_revalidate_ttl, runtime.caching.sql_results.encoding, scheduler partition-assignment configuration, and catalog.access: read_write_create.

Data Connectors & Catalogs​

New connectors:

• Elasticsearch (Alpha, Spice.ai Enterprise): Query Elasticsearch indexes as SQL tables with native hybrid search — vector_search() kNN, text_search() BM25, and rrf() fusion — plus Elasticsearch as a backing vector engine, direct FTS engine configuration, and index lifecycle controls.
• GCS (Alpha): Federated queries against Google Cloud Storage, with Iceberg table support.
• Azure Cosmos DB (Alpha): Read-only NoSQL / Core SQL API connector with cross-partition scans and schema inference.
• Git (RC): HTTPS/SSH auth, Git LFS support, and per-repo connection resilience.
• ADBC: Data connector and catalog with full query federation, BigQuery support, and schema/table discovery.
• DuckLake (Beta): Lakehouse-style data management with DuckDB as the metadata catalog and object storage for data — ACID transactions, time travel, and schema evolution on Parquet.
• Self-Hosted Spice Connector: Connect Spice to another self-hosted Spice runtime as a federated source.

New catalog connectors for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, and Snowflake, using native metadata catalogs for schema and table discovery. Unity Catalog compatibility extends to OSS Unity Catalog deployments, and DDL-defined catalogs can expose and query views.

HTTP connector: OAuth2 refresh-token authentication, query-parameter and no-limit pagination, dynamic request headers parameterised from query predicates, subquery-driven request parameters for fan-out queries, response metadata as queryable columns, map-to-array conversion, shared and persistent rate-control state across restarts and replicas, no caching of transient 429/5xx errors, and a correctly populated fetched_at column.

JSON ingestion: Single-object documents, JSONL, BOM-prefixed input, Socrata SODA responses, format auto-detection, and RFC 6901 json_pointer extraction of nested payloads.

Databricks: Resilience controls, Unity Catalog-aware permission prechecks with structured advisory errors, Classic SQL Warehouse foreign-table compatibility, connect_timeout/client_timeout parameters, a Databricks SQL dialect for federation, and Delta Lake column mapping (Name and Id modes).

Other connector improvements: MongoDB SRV support; MySQL mysql_zero_date_behavior; Snowflake OBJECT, MAP, GEOGRAPHY, GEOMETRY, VECTOR, and TIMESTAMP_LTZ types plus key-pair auth; ClickHouse Date32; S3 s3_url_style for path-style addressing and faster Parquet reads; GraphQL custom auth headers; Oracle and MSSQL sort/limit pushdown; GitHub GraphQL resilience; and improved Kafka reliability.

AI & LLM​

• Provider-Aware Prompt Caching: LLM calls automatically use provider-side prompt caching (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI) for system prompts and tool descriptions, reducing latency and cost.
• Responses API Across All Providers: The Responses API works with every configured model provider, including streaming response.output_text.delta events and Authorization: Bearer header support.
• Multi-Vector Embeddings with MaxSim: List-of-string columns produce one embedding per element with MaxSim/mean/sum scoring for ColBERT-style late-interaction retrieval, plus a _match column identifying the best-matching element.
• rerank() UDTF: Reorder results from vector_search, text_search, or rrf using any registered chat model as a reranker, with automatic query propagation and pushdown support.
• Searchable LLM Tool Registry: Agents discover tools via semantic search instead of enumerating every tool in the system prompt.
• MCP Improvements: Streamable HTTP transport (/v1/mcp) on rmcp v1.5.0, native auth for streamable HTTP tools (mcp_auth_token, mcp_headers), external MCP server tool calls traced in task history, and configurable allowed_hosts.
• Per-Model Rate-Limited AI UDF Execution for controlling concurrent AI function invocations.

Search & Vectors​

• DuckDB Vector Engine: vector_engine: duckdb uses DuckDB's HNSW index for fast approximate nearest-neighbor search without an external vector store. In v2.0.0, the DuckDB VSS extension is statically linked into the bundled DuckDB, so HNSW vector search works out-of-the-box on clean machines with no extension download. HNSW indexes are preserved across data refresh, and cosine_distance pushes down via array_cosine_distance.
• Hybrid Search: Combine kNN vector search and BM25 full-text search with reciprocal rank fusion (rrf()), backed by Tantivy, Elasticsearch, or DuckDB.
• Full-Text Search Performance: Significantly faster Tantivy ingestion with rollback-on-error, and search metadata is correctly preserved on indexing and in Vortex physical schema calculation.
• Embedding Validation: row_id columns are validated during dataset initialization.

Caching​

Improvements across Caching:

• Stale-While-Revalidate: runtime.caching.sql_results.stale_while_revalidate_ttl serves stale results while revalidating in the background.
• Cache Encoding: Optional compression (e.g., zstd) for SQL results cache entries.
• Retention Policies for cached query results, and improved CDC-driven cache invalidation (including view plan invalidation on updates).
• Idle Cache Maintenance: Periodic maintenance drains invalidation predicates on idle caches, fixing unbounded memory growth in rarely-read caches.

Performance & Query Engine​

Apache DataFusion is upgraded to v52.5 over the course of the release cycle, bringing:

• Sort Pushdown to Scans: ~30x faster top-K queries on pre-sorted data; Parquet scans reverse row-group order for DESC on ASC-sorted files.
• Rewritten Sort-Merge Join: Up to three orders of magnitude faster in pathological cases (e.g., TPC-H Q21: minutes → milliseconds).
• Dynamic Filters: MIN/MAX aggregates and hash-join build sides prune files, row groups, and rows during execution.
• Faster CASE Expressions, statistics caching, and prefix-aware list-files caching for faster planning.
• TableProvider DELETE/UPDATE hooks and the RelationPlanner API for extensible SQL planning.
• Strict Overflow Handling: try_cast_to errors on overflow instead of silently producing NULLs.

Additional engine work: default query memory limit raised from 70% to 90% with GreedyMemoryPool, partial aggregation optimization for FlightSQLExec, improved partitioned query planning, and metastore transaction support to prevent concurrent conflicts.

Rust CLI​

The Spice CLI is completely rewritten from Go to Rust — a single spice binary built from the same codebase as spiced, with full feature parity across 27+ commands.

• spice query: Interactive REPL for async queries with multi-line SQL, progress indication, and cancellation.
• spice dataset configure: Non-interactive flag-based configuration (--from, --description, --param KEY=VALUE, --set) alongside interactive prompts.
• spice completions: Shell completion script generation.
• --output=json: Machine-readable output for scripting; spice login --output adds env, json, and keychain modes.
• spice init writes a yaml-language-server schema directive for IDE completions.

Observability​

• OpenTelemetry: Exporter fixes, authenticated metrics export, configurable metric name prefix (runtime.telemetry.metric_prefix), delta temporality by default, and OTLP resource attributes via runtime.telemetry.properties.
• Query Metrics: The query_executions metric gains a datasets dimension for per-dataset query attribution.
• Ingestion Metrics: rows_written, bytes_written, and dataset_acceleration_size_bytes for acceleration refresh and Flight DoPut/ADBC ingestion, and EXPLAIN ANALYZE metrics in FlightSQLExec.
• Task History: Distributed task history in cluster mode and tracing for external MCP server tool calls.

Notable Bug Fixes​

• localpod synchronization: localpod child datasets correctly track parent refreshes when the parent uses the in-memory Arrow accelerator.
• Spice Cloud federation: Correlated subqueries are kept out of JOIN ON conditions, fixing rejected federated queries.
• refresh_mode: snapshot: No longer reports Ready with empty data when no snapshot exists.
• Search metadata: Field and schema metadata preserved on search indexing and in Vortex physical schema calculation.
• HTTP connector: fetched_at column is correctly populated.
• Connector correctness: DynamoDB Streams transient-error retries and typed-NULL DML handling; ScyllaDB physical filter pushdown disabled to fix incorrect results; MSSQL TOP N pushdown; DuckDB DELETE/UPDATE on full and caching refresh modes; Turso checked arithmetic for timestamp conversions; ODBC queries no longer silently return 0 rows on failure; Flight GetFlightInfo/DoGet schema parity.

Dependency Updates​

Contributors​

• @cluster2600
• @ewgenius
• @Jeadie
• @krinart
• @lukekim
• @peasee
• @penberg
• @phillipleblanc
• @sgrebnov

Breaking Changes​

• Models included by default: The separate models build variant has been removed. Local LLM inference is always included in the default build and image.

• Windows native builds removed: Use WSL for local development.

• Spicepod version defaults to v2: spice init creates version: v2 spicepods. v1 remains supported with auto-migration; v1beta1 is no longer accepted.

• Flattened runtime.scheduler configuration: The nested runtime.scheduler.partition_management block is flattened and renamed:

  # Before
  runtime:
    scheduler:
      partition_management:
        interval: 30s
        max_assignments_per_cycle: 16
        discovery_timeout: 10s
  
  # After
  runtime:
    scheduler:
      partition_assignment_interval: 30s
      max_assignments_per_interval: 16
      partition_discovery_timeout: 10s
  

• S3 metadata columns renamed: location, last_modified, size → _location, _last_modified, _size.

• Default query memory limit changed: Increased from 70% to 90%.

• Metric renames: accelerated_refresh metrics renamed to acceleration_refresh; last_refresh_time gauge renamed to include the milliseconds unit.

• DuckDB parameter rename: partitioned_write_flush_threshold → partitioned_write_flush_threshold_rows.

• /v1/search API: Always returns an array in matches, even for single results.

• /v1/evals API removed.

• Perplexity model provider removed.

• x.ai model endpoint: x.ai models exclusively use the /v1/responses endpoint.

Upgrade Guide from v1.x​

Most v1 spicepods continue to work on v2.0 — v1 remains supported and deprecated fields auto-migrate at load time — so many deployments can upgrade by updating the binary or image alone. The steps below cover the breaking changes that may require manual action. Review each before upgrading a production deployment.

1. Build, image, and platform changes​

• Models are now included by default. The separate models build variant (and the corresponding -models image tags) has been removed; local LLM inference is always included in the default build and image. If your deployment pinned a models build or -models-tagged image, switch to the default build/image.
• Native Windows builds are removed. Use WSL for local Windows development.

2. Adopt Spicepod v2 (recommended)​

spice init now creates version: v2 spicepods. v1 spicepods remain supported with automatic migration, but v1beta1 is no longer accepted. To move to v2, set version: v2 and update the following fields — each auto-migrates from v1, but updating now clears the deprecation:

3. Update changed configuration​

• DuckDB parameter rename: partitioned_write_flush_threshold → partitioned_write_flush_threshold_rows.
• Default query memory limit raised from 70% to 90%. If you relied on the previous default to leave headroom for other processes on the host, set it explicitly via runtime.query.memory_limit.

4. Update queries and API clients​

• S3 metadata columns renamed: location, last_modified, size → _location, _last_modified, _size. Update any queries that reference these columns.
• /v1/search always returns an array in matches, even for a single result. Update clients that assumed a scalar value.
• /v1/evals API removed. Remove integrations that depend on it.

5. Update model providers​

• Perplexity model provider removed. Re-point affected models to another provider.
• x.ai models use the /v1/responses endpoint exclusively. Ensure x.ai integrations target the Responses API.

6. Update observability​

• Metric renames: accelerated_refresh → acceleration_refresh, and the last_refresh_time gauge is renamed to include the milliseconds unit. Update dashboards and alerts that reference these metric names.

After updating, restart the runtime and verify datasets and models report ready via /v1/datasets?status=true and /v1/models?status=true (the CLI shows a Ready/ERROR column).

Cookbook Updates​

New Spice Cookbook recipes added during the v2.0 release cycle:

• Async Queries: Submit long-running queries asynchronously and retrieve results later.
• DuckLake Catalog: Lakehouse-style data management with ACID transactions and time travel.
• Distributed Query: Run Spice in multi-active distributed cluster mode.
• mTLS: Mutual TLS for HTTP and Flight endpoints.
• Elasticsearch Connector: Query Elasticsearch indexes as SQL tables.
• MCP Server: Use Spice as an MCP server over Streamable HTTP.
• Snowflake DML: Write-back to Snowflake with INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE.
• PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MSSQL Catalogs: Schema and table discovery for external databases.
• Full-Text Search: BM25 full-text search over accelerated datasets.

The Spice Cookbook includes more than 100 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.

Upgrading​

To upgrade to v2.0.0, use one of the following methods:

CLI:

spice upgrade

Homebrew:

brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice

Docker:

Pull the spiceai/spiceai:2.0.0 image:

docker pull spiceai/spiceai:2.0.0

For available tags, see DockerHub.

Helm:

helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai --version 2.0.0

AWS Marketplace:

Spice is available in the AWS Marketplace.

What's Changed​

Changelog​

• Add TPC-DS integration tests with S3 source and PostgreSQL acceleration by @phillipleblanc in #9006
• fix(tests): fix flaky/slow/failing unit tests by @phillipleblanc in #9009
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots for DF51 upgrade by @app/github-actions in #9008
• fix: add feature gate to rrf TEST_EMBEDDING_MODEL by @phillipleblanc in #9017
• fix: features check by @phillipleblanc in #9014
• fix: Enable Cayenne acceleration snapshots by @lukekim in #9020
• URL table support by @lukekim in #9018
• ScyllaDB key filter by @lukekim in #8997
• fix: Schema mismatch when using column projection with HTTP caching by @phillipleblanc in #9021
• Add more tests for HTTP caching with columns selection by @sgrebnov in #9025
• HTTP cache snapshots: default to time_interval and fix snapshots_creation_policy: on_change by @sgrebnov in #9026
• Fix duplicate snapshot creation on startup by @sgrebnov in #9029
• Add ScyllaDB and SMB to the README table by @krinart in #9034
• Remove waiting for runtime to be ready before creating snapshot by @krinart in #9033
• Fix snapshot on_change policy to skip when no writes occurred by @sgrebnov in #9028
• Release notes for release release/1.11.0-rc.2 by @krinart in #9016
• ci: use arduino/setup-protoc for official protobuf compiler by @phillipleblanc in #9036
• ci: install unzip on aarch64 runner for arduino/setup-protoc by @phillipleblanc in #9038
• fix: don't fail release if upload to minio fails by @phillipleblanc in #9039
• Add missing protoc step to setup-cc action by @krinart in #9041
• fix: Update Search integration test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #9013
• Fix formula_1 and codebase_community in bird-bench by @Jeadie in #9000
• Cayenne S3 Express One Zone improvements by @lukekim in #9015
• Add zlib1g-dev to CI by @lukekim in #9052
• Improve validation and logging for hash indexes by @lukekim in #9047
• Upgrade Vortex with CASE-WHEN by @lukekim in #9051
• x.ai models now exclusively use /v1/responses endpoint by @lukekim in #9400
• Improvements for snapshot schema comparison by @krinart in #9401
• v2.0 breaking changes by @lukekim in #9233
• Create PartitionManagementTask for scheduler to update accelerated table partition assignments by @Jeadie in #9378
• refactor(Cayenne): route all write orchestration through CayenneDataSink by @sgrebnov in #9402
• Refactor benchmark to use QueryExecutor trait by @Jeadie in #9418
• feat: Add spidapter build and release workflow by @peasee in #9427
• Testoperator: add support for api-key when connecting to external spice instance by @sgrebnov in #9421
• Initial implementation of Ducklake catalog & data connectors by @lukekim in #9083
• Require aws_lc_rs since jsonwebtoken upgrade by @Jeadie in #9426
• feat: Add spidapter tool by @peasee in #9425
• Add release notes for 1.11.2 patch release by @sgrebnov in #9430
• feat(spidapter): integrate system-adapter-protocol with SCP provisioning by @phillipleblanc in #9434
• Add DuckLake TPCH E2E workflow and federated Spicepod configuration by @lukekim in #9431
• fix(spidapter): use Flight handshake auth instead of x-api-key header by @phillipleblanc in #9435
• [spidapter] Keep only what sparks joy by @Jeadie in #9439
• Refactor binary operator balancing by @Jeadie in #9424
• feat: Add Iceberg DDL support (CREATE TABLE / DROP TABLE) for default catalog override by @phillipleblanc in #9440
• Fix Flight SQL schema consistency: expand view types and verify field names by @sgrebnov in #9438
• Update spidapter for new system-adapter-protocol by @sgrebnov in #9442
• docs: fix typos and syntax errors in style guide and error handling docs by @cluster2600 in #9445
• Add acceleration refresh ingestion metrics (rows_written, bytes_written) by @phillipleblanc in #9461
• Refactor(Cayenne): Replace CatalogError and string based errors with Snafu errors by @sgrebnov in #9403
• Replace deprecated claude-3-5-haiku-latest with claude-haiku-4-5 by @Jeadie in #9492
• Fix #9481: Preserve schema in results cache for empty query results by @phillipleblanc in #9485
• Fix partition by serializing by @Jeadie in #9474
• query: reconcile execution stream nullability with logical plan schema by @phillipleblanc in #9486
• initial spice-cloud-client crate and spice cloud metrics --app <app-name>. by @Jeadie in #9480
• feat: Return dataset error message in datasets API by @peasee in #9487
• Spicebench by @lukekim in #9447
• build(deps): consolidate dependabot dependency updates by @phillipleblanc in #9504
• fix(cluster): route non-partitioned accelerated tables in distributed mode by @phillipleblanc in #9508
• Enable core scalar UDFs in refresh SQL by @sgrebnov in #9502
• Fix metrics in Spidapter again by @Jeadie in #9497
• fix(cluster): tolerate Completed->status propagation race in distributed query handle by @phillipleblanc in #9510
• feat: Support distributed ingestion in cayenne catalog by @peasee in #9506
• Fix Cayenne duplicate primary keys after DELETE + UPSERT CDC sequences by @krinart in #9494
• fix(cluster): rewrite table scans inside subqueries for distributed execution by @phillipleblanc in #9518
• fix: Set catalog mode to readwritecreate in spidapter by @peasee in #9519
• Upgrade AWS SDK crates & set APN user-agent in AWS SDK credential bridge by @lukekim in #8328
• feat(runtime): add runtime ready_state on_registration semantics by @lukekim in #9522
• fix: Add spidapter post-setup retries by @peasee in #9526
• Make partition discovery more robust and make initialization non-blocking by @sgrebnov in #9499
• Make lint-rust-fix support targeted packages and features by @Jeadie in #9511
• Handle new Cloud SCP API by @Jeadie in #9532
• Refactor and simplify streaming benchmarks by @krinart in #9405
• fix: ensure spidapter only increments attempts on failures by @peasee in #9534
• feat: Support specifying app resources in spidapter by @peasee in #9536
• test(runtime): Spice Cayenne DDL integration test by @lukekim in #9535
• fix: Handle schema evolution mismatch errors during data refresh by @lukekim in #9527
• fix: resolve clippy lint warnings by @phillipleblanc in #9547
• pr-builds --tag <TAG> for build_and_release.yml by @Jeadie in #9507
• Add --output flag to spice login with env/json/keychain modes by @Jeadie in #9541
• Don't use 'PartitionedTableScanRewrite' in async distributed query by @Jeadie in #9548
• feat(spidapter): add local backend mode with single executor by @phillipleblanc in #9531
• support chat template in HF by @Jeadie in #9543
• fix(cayenne): stream PK retention deletes and run OOM regression in CI by @phillipleblanc in #9533
• cayenne: Staged append writes to prevent partial writes and data loss on stream error by @sgrebnov in #9491
• AcceleratedTable::scan use FederatedTable::scan when ClusterRole::Scheduler by @Jeadie in #9550
• Upgrade to delta-kernel-rs v0.18.2 by @lukekim in #9528
• Run cayenne tests as part of PR CI by @sgrebnov in #9554
• Upgrade to DataFusion v52.2.0 by @lukekim in #9419
• Remove Snapshot Compaction + Add snapshot existence check by @krinart in #9523
• Update dependencies by @lukekim in #9566
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #9565
• fix: Compare Cayenne table configuration on startup by @peasee in #9529
• Make Refresh::refresh_sql more robust to alterations over time. by @Jeadie in #9549
• fix: Update datafusion-table-providers dependency to latest revision by @lukekim in #9574
• Unset AWS_ENDPOINT_URL when empty by @krinart in #9575
• fix: allow BytesProcessedExec repartitioning for unordered input by @lukekim in #9540
• Sanitize DataFusion errors by @lukekim in #9530
• Add conditional logging for partition assignments by @Jeadie in #9577
• use 'properly early exit on SIGTERM' by @Jeadie in #9573
• Update datafusion to 52.2.0 by @phillipleblanc in #9582
• Ensure we query one and only one partition per request by @Jeadie in #9416
• feat: Add support for Spicepod version v2 by @lukekim in #9583
• [SpiceDQ] Improve error messages; Avoid race condition on allocate_initial_partitions. by @Jeadie in #9579
• Update ballista dependencies to latest 52.0.0 revision by @lukekim in #9581
• Fix Databricks spark_connect mode always disabled by @phillipleblanc in #9586
• Support partitioning in Arrow accelerator by @Jeadie in #9571
• Fix spice query CLI response deserialization by @phillipleblanc in #9588
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #9584
• fix: Share RuntimeEnv across Cayenne read/write/delete paths for targeted list_files_cache invalidation by @sgrebnov in #9589
• feat: Add file:// state_location support for async queries scheduler by @phillipleblanc in #9590
• Update endgame links by @krinart in #9598
• ci: fix E2E CLI upgrade test to use latest release for spiced download by @phillipleblanc in #9613
• fix(DF): Lazily initialize BatchCoalescer in RepartitionExec to avoid schema type mismatch by @sgrebnov in #9623
• feat: Implement catalog connectors for various databases by @lukekim in #9509
• Refactor and clean up code across multiple crates by @lukekim in #9620
• fix: Improve error handling for distributed mode and state_location configuration by @lukekim in #9611
• Properly install postgres in install-postgres action by @krinart in #9629
• fix: Use Python venv for schema validation in CI by @phillipleblanc in #9637
• Update spicepod.schema.json by @app/github-actions in #9640
• Update testoperator dispatch to use release/2.0 branch by @phillipleblanc in #9641
• fix: Align CUDA asset names in Dockerfile and install tests with build output by @phillipleblanc in #9639
• Fix expect test scripts in E2E Installation AI test by @sgrebnov in #9643
• testoperator for partitioned arrow accelerator by @Jeadie in #9635
• Remove default 1s refresh_check_interval from spidapter for hive datasets by @phillipleblanc in #9645
• Fix scheduler panic and cancel race condition by @phillipleblanc in #9644
• Align Spice.ai connector parameter names across catalog/data connectors by @lukekim in #9632
• docs: update distribution details and add NAS support in release notes by @lukekim in #9650
• Enable postgres-accel in CI builds for benchmarks by @sgrebnov in #9649
• perf: Cache Turso metastore connection across operations by @penberg in #9646
• Add 'scheduler_state_location' to spidapter by @Jeadie in #9655
• Implement Cayenne S3 Express multi-zone live test with data validation by @lukekim in #9631
• chore(spidapter): bump default memory limit from 8Gi to 32Gi by @phillipleblanc in #9661
• perf: Use prepare_cached() in Turso and SQLite metastore backends by @penberg in #9662
• Improve CDC cache invalidation by @krinart in #9651
• Refactor Cayenne IDs to use UUIDv7 strings by @lukekim in #9667
• fix: add liveness check for dead executors in partition routing by @Jeadie in #9657
• fix(s3): Fix metadata column schema mismatches in projected queries by @sgrebnov in #9664
• s3_metadata_columns tests: include test for location outside table prefix by @sgrebnov in #9676
• docs: Update DuckDB, GCS, Git connector and Cayenne documentation by @lukekim in #9671
• Add s3_url_style support for S3 connector URL addressing by @phillipleblanc in #9642
• Consolidate E2E workflows and require WSL for Windows runtime by @lukekim in #9660
• Upgrade to Rust v1.93.1 by @lukekim in #9669
• Security fixes and improvements by @lukekim in #9666
• feat(flight): add DoPut rows/bytes written metrics for DoPut ETL ingestion tracking by @phillipleblanc in #9663
• Skip caching http error response + add response_headers by @krinart in #9670
• refactor: Remove v1/evals functionality by @Jeadie in #9420
• Make a test harness for Distributed Spice integration tests by @Jeadie in #9615
• Enable on_zero_results: use_source for views by @krinart in #9699
• fix(spidapter): Lower memory limit, passthrough AWS secrets, override flight URL by @peasee in #9704
• Show an error on a shared acceleration file with snapshots enabled by @krinart in #9698
• Fixes for anthropic by @Jeadie in #9707
• Use max_partitions_per_executor in allocate_initial_partitions by @Jeadie in #9659
• [SpiceDQ] Accelerations must have partition key by @Jeadie in #9711
• Upgrade to Turso v0.5 by @lukekim in #9628
• feat: Rename metadata columns to _location, _last_modified, _size by @phillipleblanc in #9712
• fix: bump datafusion-ballista to fix BatchCoalescer schema mismatch panic by @phillipleblanc in #9716
• fix: Ensure Cayenne respects target file size by @peasee in #9730
• refactor: Make DDL preprocessing generic from Iceberg DDL processing by @peasee in #9731
• [SpiceDQ] Distribute query of Cayenne Catalog to executors with data by @Jeadie in #9727
• Properly set primary_keys/on_conflict for Cayenne tables by @krinart in #9739
• Add executor resource and replica support to cloud app config by @ewgenius in #9734
• feat: Support PARTITION BY in Cayenne Catalog table creation by @peasee in #9741
• Update datafusion and related packages to version 52.3.0 by @lukekim in #9708
• Route FlightSQL statement updates through QueryBuilder by @phillipleblanc in #9754
• JSON file format improvements by @lukekim in #9743
• [SpiceDQ] Partition Cayenne catalogs writes through to executors by @Jeadie in #9737
• Update to DF v52.3.0 versions of datafusion & datafusion-tableproviders by @lukekim in #9756
• Make S3 metadata column handling more robust by @sgrebnov in #9762
• Fetch API keys from dedicated endpoint instead of apps response by @phillipleblanc in #9767
• Update arrow-rs, datafusion-federation, and datafusion-table-providers dependencies by @phillipleblanc in #9769
• Chunk metastore batch inserts to respect SQLite parameter limits by @phillipleblanc in #9770
• Improve JSON SODA support by @lukekim in #9795
• Add ADBC Data Connector by @lukekim in #9723
• docs: Release Cayenne as RC by @peasee in #9766
• cli[feat]: cloud mode to use region-specific endpoints by @lukekim in #9803
• Include updated JSON formats in HTTPS connector by @lukekim in #9800
• Flight DoPut: Partition-aware write-through forwarding by @Jeadie in #9759
• Pass through authentication to ADBC connector by @lukekim in #9801
• Move scheduler_state_location from adapter metadata to env var by @phillipleblanc in #9802
• Fix Cayenne DoPut upsert returning stale data after 3+ writes by @phillipleblanc in #9806
• Fix JSON column projection producing schema mismatch by @sgrebnov in #9811
• Fix http connector by @krinart in #9818
• Fix ADBC Connector build and test by @lukekim in #9813
• Support update & delete DML for distributed cayenne catalog by @Jeadie in #9805
• Set allow_http param when S3 endpoint uses http scheme by @phillipleblanc in #9834
• fix: Cayenne Catalog DDL requires a connected executor in distributed mode by @Jeadie in #9838
• fix: Add conditional put support for file:// scheduler state location by @Jeadie in #9842
• fix: Require the DDL primary key contain the partition key by @Jeadie in #9844
• fix: Databricks SQL Warehouse schema retrieval with INLINE disposition and async retry by @lukekim in #9846
• Filter pushdown improvements for SqlTable by @lukekim in #9852
• feat: add iam_role_source parameter for AWS credential configuration by @lukekim in #9854
• Fix ODBC queries silently returning 0 rows on query failure by @lukekim in #9864
• feat(adbc): Add ADBC catalog connector with schema/table discovery by @lukekim in #9865
• Make Turso SQL unparsing more robust and fix date comparisons by @lukekim in #9871
• Fix Flight/FlightSQL filter precedence and mutable query consistency by @lukekim in #9876
• Partial Aggregation optimisation for FlightSQLExec by @lukekim in #9882
• fix: v1/responses API preserves client instructions when system_prompt is set by @Jeadie in #9884
• feat: emit scheduler_active_executors_count and use it in spidapter by @Jeadie in #9885
• feat: Add custom auth header support for GraphQL connector by @krinart in #9899
• Add --endpoint flag to spice run with scheme-based routing by @lukekim in #9903
• When executor connects, send DDL for existing tables by @Jeadie in #9904
• fix: Improve ADBC driver shutdown handling and error classification by @lukekim in #9905
• fix: require all executors to succeed for distributed DML (DELETE/UPDATE) forwarding by @Jeadie in #9908
• fix(cayenne catalog): fix catalog refresh race condition causing duplicate primary keys by @Jeadie in #9909
• Remove Perplexity support by @Jeadie in #9910
• Fix refresh_sql support for debezium constraints by @krinart in #9912
• Implement DML for DynamoDBTableProvider by @lukekim in #9915
• chore: Update iceberg-rust fork to v0.9 by @lukekim in #9917
• Run physical optimizer on FallbackOnZeroResultsScanExec fallback plan by @sgrebnov in #9927
• Improve Databricks error message when dataset has no columns by @sgrebnov in #9928
• Delta Lake: fix data skipping for >= timestamp predicates by @sgrebnov in #9932
• fix: Ensure distributed Cayenne DML inserts are forwarded to executors by @Jeadie in #9948
• Add full query federation support for ADBC data connector by @lukekim in #9953
• Make time_format deserialization case-insensitive by @claudespice in #9955
• Hash ADBC join-pushdown context to prevent credential leaks in EXPLAIN plans by @lukekim in #9956
• fix: Normalize Arrow Dictionary types for DuckDB and SQLite acceleration by @sgrebnov in #9959
• ADBC BigQuery: Improve BigQuery dialect date/time and interval SQL generation by @lukekim in #9967
• Make BigQueryDialect more robust and add BigQuery TPC-H benchmark support by @lukekim in #9969
• fix: Show proper unauthorized error instead of misleading runtime unavailable by @lukekim in #9972
• fix: Enforce target_chunk_size as hard maximum in chunking by @lukekim in #9973
• Add caching retention by @krinart in #9984
• fix: improve Databricks schema error detection and messages by @lukekim in #9987
• fix: Set default S3 region for opendal operator and fix cayenne nextest by @phillipleblanc in #9995
• fix(PostgreSQL): fix schema discovery for PostgreSQL partitioned tables by @sgrebnov in #9997
• fix: Defer cache size check until after encoding for compressed results by @krinart in #10001
• fix: Rewrite numeric BETWEEN to CAST(AS REAL) for Turso by @lukekim in #10003
• fix: Handle integer time columns in append refresh for all accelerators by @sgrebnov in #10004
• fix: preserve s3a:// scheme when building OpenDalStorageFactory with custom endpoint by @phillipleblanc in #10006
• Fix ISO8601 time_format with Vortex/Cayenne append refresh by @sgrebnov in #10009
• fix: Address data correctness bugs found in audit by @sgrebnov in #10015
• fix(federation): fix SQL unparsing for Inexact filter pushdown with alias by @lukekim in #10017
• Improve GitHub connector ref handling and resilience by @lukekim in #10023
• feat: Add spice completions command for shell completion generation by @lukekim in #10024
• fix: Fix data correctness bugs in DynamoDB decimal conversion and GraphQL pagination by @sgrebnov in #10054
• Implement RefreshDataset for distributed control stream by @Jeadie in #10055
• perf: Improve S3 parquet read performance by @sgrebnov in #10064
• fix: Prevent write-through stalls and preserve PartitionTableProvider during catalog refresh by @Jeadie in #10066
• feat: spice completions auto-detects shell directory and writes file by @lukekim in #10068
• fix: Bug in DynamoDB, GraphQL, and ISO8601 refresh data handling by @sgrebnov in #10063
• fix partial aggregation deduplication on string checking by @lukekim in #10078
• fix: add MetastoreTransaction support to prevent concurrent transaction conflicts by @phillipleblanc in #10080
• fix: Use GreedyMemoryPool, add spidapter query memory limit arg by @phillipleblanc in #10082
• feat: Add metrics for EXPLAIN ANALYZE in FlightSQLExec by @lukekim in #10084
• Use strict cast in try_cast_to to error on overflow instead of silent NULL by @sgrebnov in #10104
• feat: Implement MERGE INTO for Cayenne catalog tables by @peasee in #10105
• feat: Add distributed MERGE INTO support for Cayenne catalog tables by @peasee in #10106
• Improve JSON format auto-detection for single multi-line objects by @lukekim in #10107
• Add mode: file_update acceleration mode by @krinart in #10108
• Coerce unsupported Arrow types to Iceberg v2 equivalents in REST catalog API by @peasee in #10109
• fix: Update default query memory limit to 90% from 70% by @phillipleblanc in #10112
• feat: Add mTLS client auth support to spice sql REPL by @lukekim in #10113
• fix(datafusion-federation): report error on overflow instead of silent NULL by @sgrebnov in #10124
• fix: Prevent data loss in MERGE when source has duplicate keys by @peasee in #10126
• feat: Add ClickHouse Date32 type support by @sgrebnov in #10132
• Add Delta Lake column mapping support (Name/Id modes) by @sgrebnov in #10134
• fix: Restore Turso numeric BETWEEN rewrite lost in DML revert by @lukekim in #10139
• fix: Enable arm64 Linux builds with fp16 and lld workarounds by @lukekim in #10142
• fix: remove double trailing slash in Unity Catalog storage locations by @sgrebnov in #10147
• fix: Improve GitHub GraphQL client resilience and performance by @lukekim in #10151
• Enable reqwest compression and optimize HTTP client settings by @lukekim in #10154
• fix: executor startup failures by @Jeadie in #10155
• feat: Distributed runtime.task_history support by @Jeadie in #10156
• fix: Preserve timestamp timezone in DDL forwarding to executors by @peasee in #10159
• feat: Per-model rate-limited concurrent AI UDF execution by @Jeadie in #10160
• fix(Turso): Reject subquery/outer-ref filter pushdown in Turso provider by @lukekim in #10174
• Fix linux/macos spice upgrade by @phillipleblanc in #10194
• Improve CREATE TABLE LIKE error messages, success output, EXPLAIN, and validation by @peasee in #10203
• fix: chunk MERGE delete filters and update Vortex for stack-safe IN-lists by @peasee in #10207
• Propagate runtime.params.parquet_page_index to Delta Lake connector by @sgrebnov in #10209
• Properly mark dataset as Ready on Scheduler by @Jeadie in #10215
• fix: handle Utf8View/LargeUtf8 in GitHub connector ref filters by @lukekim in #10217
• fix(databricks): Fix schema introspection and timestamp overflow by @lukekim in #10226
• fix(databricks): Fix schema introspection failures for non-Unity-Catalog environments by @lukekim in #10227
• feat: Add pagination support to HTTP data connector by @lukekim in #10228
• feat(databricks): DESCRIBE TABLE fallback and source-native type parsing for Lakehouse Federation by @lukekim in #10229
• fix(databricks): harden HTTP retries, compression, and token refresh by @lukekim in #10232
• feat[helm chart]: Add support for ServiceAccount annotations and AWS IRSA example by @peasee in #9833
• fix: Log warning and fall back gracefully on Cayenne config change by @krinart in #9092
• fix: Handle engine mismatch gracefully in snapshot fallback loop by @krinart in #9187
• fix: Full Text Search schema mismatch with ADBC connector by @lukekim in #10235
• docs: Update v2.0.0-rc.2 release notes with latest changes by @lukekim in #10238
• Fix append refresh dedup failure when refresh_sql selects column subset by @sgrebnov in #10225
• Revert "Properly mark dataset as Ready on Scheduler (#10215)" by @sgrebnov in #10242
• Fix failing merge conflicts for benchmarks by @krinart in #10247
• fix(github): fetch commits for dynamic and slash refs by @lukekim in #10233
• Upgrade DataFusion to v52.5.0-rc1 by @lukekim in #10249
• Merge develop to trunk (2026-04-09) by @claudespice in #10248
• fix: Validate embedding row_id columns during dataset init (fixes #8226) by @claudespice in #10208
• fix: Update tpch benchmark snapshots for federated/glue[csv].yaml by @app/github-actions in #10244
• feat(databricks): add resilience controls, UC awareness, and task history instrumentation by @lukekim in #10246
• fix: Make PartitionManager resilient to bare vs fully qualified table references by @sgrebnov in #10257
• fix: Update tpch benchmark snapshots for accelerated/s3[parquet]-cayenne[file].yaml by @app/github-actions in #10256
• Merge develop to trunk (2026-04-10) by @claudespice in #10251
• Improve Snowflake/ADBC dataset registration performance and observability by @lukekim in #10266
• Fixes for kafka connector by @krinart in #10263
• fix(runtime): gate otel code tags, suppress aws sdk noise, and unblock connector init by @lukekim in #10260
• fix(runtime): avoid regionless AWS SDK loads by @lukekim in #10271
• Add versioned release install workflow coverage by @lukekim in #10276
• fix(runtime): handle HTTP JSON unions and spicepod reloads by @lukekim in #10277
• Databricks UC permission prechecks: explicit denial as permanent error, ambiguous cases advisory by @lukekim in #10274
• Revert component status changes re-introduced by develop merge (#10248) by @sgrebnov in #10293
• Fix broken CI workflows by @ewgenius in #10294
• Group dependabot updates by ecosystem by @lukekim in #10296
• fix(tests): Replace flaky S3 Vectors snapshot tests with structural validation by @lukekim in #10301
• Update test_github_workflows snapshot by @lukekim in #10304
• fix(ci): fix Bedrock runner mismatch and snapshot auto-merge failure by @ewgenius in #10306
• feat(http): Add map-to-array conversion and query-parameter pagination by @lukekim in #10295
• New crate: datafusion-ddl by @Jeadie in #10205
• Make Databricks UC permission checks advisory with structured error reporting by @lukekim in #10283
• build(deps): bump the github-actions-dependencies group with 4 updates by @app/dependabot in #10298
• fix: Clear cached plans on view updates by @peasee in #10312
• build(deps): bump the aws-sdk group with 7 updates by @app/dependabot in #10299
• Code out of runtime. by @Jeadie in #10178
• fix: Respect function registry denies for accelerated table filter pushdown by @peasee in #10311
• fix: Don't block heartbeat when all slots acquired by @peasee in #10322
• fix: strip only outer parens in get_table_partition_expr_from_ctx by @Jeadie in #10323
• Upgrade datafusion-table-providers with MongoDB SRV support by @lukekim in #10317
• fix: Avoid pushing down bucketing partition expressions into executors by @peasee in #10324
• Upgrade datafusion-table-providers to d1b911a5 and bump adbc to 0.23 by @lukekim in #10329
• fix: Update Search integration test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #10308
• Handle foreign table + Classic sql warehouse combination gracefully by @krinart in #10318
• New crate datafusion-flightsql by @Jeadie in #10201
• Set tantivy=warn unless very verbose logging by @Jeadie in #10338
• Remove image registry and image name options from spidapter by @ewgenius in #10241
• build(deps): bump sysinfo from 0.37.2 to 0.38.4 by @app/dependabot in #10291
• build(deps): bump futures from 0.3.31 to 0.3.32 by @app/dependabot in #10289
• New crate 'datafusion-dml' by @Jeadie in #10334
• Jeadie/26 04 16/spice sql by @Jeadie in #10343
• Add Teraswitch/Pittsburgh apt mirrors + retry config for CI runners by @lukekim in #10349
• Implement sort pushdown and fix pushdown gaps across providers by @lukekim in #10337
• Merge develop to trunk (2026-04-16) by @claudespice in #10345
• Update candle and mistral.rs lock-step pins by @lukekim in #10278
• docs: fix status badges in README by @lukekim in #10350
• Migrate secrets to vars by @krinart in #10354
• Add limit pushdown and improve sort pushdown for Oracle and MSSQL by @sgrebnov in #10351
• Fix ubuntu mirror configuration by @ewgenius in #10359
• fix: Increase throughput test default ready_wait from 30s to 300s (fixes #8207) by @claudespice in #10344
• Add auth headers support to OTEL metrics exporter by @lukekim in #10347
• fix(github): shrink GraphQL page size on gateway errors; lower comment defaults by @lukekim in #10355
• Relax apt mirror substitution failure to warning in CI action by @ewgenius in #10361
• feat(http): Add OAuth2 refresh-token auth to HTTP connector by @lukekim in #10348
• Upgrade Rust toolchain to 1.94.1 by @lukekim in #10353
• Handle order by and sort in PartitionedTableScanRewrite by @Jeadie in #9656
• Fix OTEL Exporter by @krinart in #10363
• Pin spiceai candle / TEI forks to merged revs; drop local [patch] overrides by @lukekim in #10362
• Integrate spiceio and makefile_targets into pr.yml by @lukekim in #10357
• ci: skip artifact compression for test binaries/archives by @lukekim in #10381
• chore(deps): bump spiceai/candle, spiceai/mistral.rs, aws-lc-rs, tantivy, rand by @lukekim in #10379
• Bump datafusion-table-providers (#10375) by @lukekim in #10384
• fix: Update Search integration test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #10376
• v2.0.0-rc.3 preparation by @ewgenius in #10382
• fix(spicepod): JSON schema accepts string or {name: expr} for partition_by by @lukekim in #10352
• fix: Use ROUND for Turso decimal BETWEEN comparisons (fixes #9872) by @claudespice in #10360
• Revert "v2.0.0-rc.3 preparation" from trunk by @ewgenius in #10386
• Add on_schema_resolved dataset ready state by @lukekim in #10368
• feat: Add Elasticsearch data connector with hybrid search support by @lukekim in #10258
• ci: bump test archive upload compression-level to 1 by @lukekim in #10388
• feat(git-connector): promote Git connector to RC status by @lukekim in #10385
• feat(postgres): stream WAL directly to Spice accelerators by @lukekim in #10364
• Add schema decomposition to the HTTP connector by @lukekim in #10393
• fix(cayenne): Skip catalog refresh state reload for existing providers by @sgrebnov in #10396
• Make cayenne-flightsql tool by @Jeadie in #10356
• build(deps): bump the github-actions-dependencies group with 2 updates by @app/dependabot in #10398
• Update openapi.json by @app/github-actions in #10272
• Merge develop to trunk — 2026-04-19 by @claudespice in #10407
• feat(otel): default OTLP push exporter to delta temporality by @phillipleblanc in #10412
• fix: Restore analyzer rule ordering to run federation before type coercion by @sgrebnov in #10415
• fix: Map Utf8/LargeUtf8 to STRING in Databricks/Spark SQL dialects by @sgrebnov in #10420
• feat(otel): add metric name prefix at runtime.telemetry.metric_prefix by @phillipleblanc in #10418
• fix: Map LargeUtf8 to VARCHAR in Athena ODBC dialect by @sgrebnov in #10419
• feat(cluster): connector-driven object store registration on executors by @phillipleblanc in #10414
• build(deps): bump ubuntu from 22.04 to 24.04 in the docker-dependencies group by @app/dependabot in #10397
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots Apr 20 by @app/github-actions in #10417
• feat(otel): apply runtime.telemetry.properties as resource attributes on exported metrics by @phillipleblanc in #10416
• Publish RC releases to DockerHub; upgrade runners to ubuntu-24.04 by @lukekim in #10428
• feat: Add Azure Cosmos DB (NoSQL) data connector (RC) by @lukekim in #10392
• feat(datafusion): flatten_json_properties + json_tree UDTFs by @lukekim in #10406
• Harden /v1/tools and /v1/nsql against unauthenticated / LLM-driven SQL by @lukekim in #10365
• feat(embeddings): multi-vector embeddings with MaxSim + late-interaction by @lukekim in #10408
• Update GH runners for CUDA builds by @ewgenius in #10432
• fix(delta_lake): register object stores on cluster executors by @phillipleblanc in #10436
• DF-native DML by @krinart in #10327
• ci: run Build and Test on spiceai-macos; split install jobs by profile by @lukekim in #10434
• Improve search UDTFs: text_search, vector_search, rrf by @lukekim in #10387
• fix(model2vec): Improve robustness of model loading for sentence-transformers layouts by @sgrebnov in #10444
• Merge develop to trunk — 2026-04-21 by @claudespice in #10448
• Enable filter pushdown for vector_search UDTF by @sgrebnov in #10447
• Support Snowflake OBJECT, MAP, GEOGRAPHY, GEOMETRY, VECTOR, TIMESTAMP_LTZ types by @lukekim in #10451
• Fix Databricks tests by @krinart in #10449
• fix(cluster): forward register_object_stores through connector wrappers by @phillipleblanc in #10460
• Fixes for vector-search by @krinart in #10455
• Add expand_maps option and flatten_json UDTF by @lukekim in #10452
• fix: Update Search integration test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #10458
• Fix physical codec decode ambiguity for empty protobuf messages by @sgrebnov in #10466
• chore(logging): demote s3_single_file_cached skip refresh log to debug by @phillipleblanc in #10467
• Enable filter pushdown for rrf UDTF by @sgrebnov in #10465
• feat(cluster): consolidate distributed state into cluster.json by @phillipleblanc in #10463
• feat(cayenne): Add column statistics and data inlining by @lukekim in #10314
• docs(copilot): flag missing wrapper delegation when adding default trait methods by @phillipleblanc in #10461
• Wire Elasticsearch vector engine write path through acceleration by @lukekim in #10453
• Add helm lint CI by @ewgenius in #10468
• Fix Azure and GCS acceleration snapshot object store credential handling by @phillipleblanc in #10486
• Update spicepod.schema.json by @app/github-actions in #10485
• fix(secrets): harden AWS Secrets Manager secret store by @lukekim in #10478
• Update datafusion-ballista crate by @sgrebnov in #10488
• feat(secrets): add ParameterSpec and more params for AWS secrets manager by @phillipleblanc in #10487
• Add rerank UDTF for hybrid search with query auto-propagation by @lukekim in #10469
• Fix flatten_json_properties by @krinart in #10475
• fix: preserve field and schema metadata in expand_views_schema by @claudespice in #10494
• Upgrade rmcp to upstream 1.5.0; switch MCP server to Streamable HTTP by @lukekim in #10491
• fix: handle Snowflake TIMESTAMP_LTZ wire format and prevent nanosecond overflow by @claudespice in #10493
• Lint parity in Makefile by @krinart in #10492
• Add connect_timeout/client_timeout params to Databricks sql_warehouse mode by @lukekim in #10495
• fix(tracing): suppress opentelemetry INFO logs at all verbosity levels by @lukekim in #10497
• DynamoDB DML by @krinart in #10470
• feat(cayenne): native vector search via SIMD similarity UDFs by @lukekim in #10456
• fix(cli): suppress banner for all JSON-producing cloud subcommands (fixes #10498) by @claudespice in #10510
• fix(deps): bump openssl to 0.10.78 by @phillipleblanc in #10509
• fix(s3): quiet AWS SDK credential probe when no region is configured by @phillipleblanc in #10506
• fix(cdc): emit ready signal on caught-up Kafka/Debezium streams (#5201) by @phillipleblanc in #10504
• runtime-cluster crate + Run partition discovery before forwarding refresh to executors by @krinart in #10490
• Update lint-rust target to use --keep-going by @Jeadie in #10508
• Add TPC-H SF100 s3[parquet]-duckdb[file] benchmark spicepod by @lukekim in #10524
• Remove dev-profile install steps from pr.yml by @Jeadie in #10507
• fix: add missing NULL check on Timestamp path in append refresh by @claudespice in #10518
• fix: return error on Decimal128/256 overflow instead of silently dropping scale by @claudespice in #10519
• fix: delegate update and delete_from in IndexedTableProvider and EmbeddingTable by @claudespice in #10520
• feat(devx): make config errors, CLI, and REPL lead users to success by @lukekim in #10489
• fix(rerank): defer execution to RerankExec, enable filters and projection pushdown by @sgrebnov in #10514
• fix(llms): support Gemma models with missing attention_bias config field by @lukekim in #10523
• Fix vector_search silently ignoring named limit/column/include_score args by @sgrebnov in #10527
• fix: split unsupported filters locally in scan() for UseSource mode by @ewgenius in #10528
• feat(secrets): add Azure Key Vault secret store by @lukekim in #10496
• Bump mistralrs by @krinart in #10532
• Fix benchmark configurations and CI build issues by @sgrebnov in #10535
• Fix catalog query overrides for MySQL and MSSQL benchmarks by @sgrebnov in #10543
• For Cayenne, preserve matched columns for MERGE ... ON <cols> by @Jeadie in #10340
• build(deps): bump the aws-sdk group across 1 directory with 5 updates by @app/dependabot in #10538
• docs: update AI agent instructions (git workflow + Rust 1.94) by @lukekim in #10544
• fix: Update tpch benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #10529
• fix: Update tpch benchmark snapshots for accelerated/s3[parquet]-duckdb[file].yaml by @app/github-actions in #10525
• Extract runtime-datafusion from runtime by @krinart in #10545
• Use generic DML extension planner for Cayenne by @Jeadie in #10437
• fix: Update Search integration test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #10552
• Fix security and correctness audit issues by @lukekim in #10526
• fix(MySQL): revert MySQL result column reorder to fix federated query failures by @sgrebnov in #10557
• Fix protoc installation by @krinart in #10566
• fix: Disable Ballista dynamic filters on HashJoinExec by @peasee in #10548
• Support views on DDL catalogs by @Jeadie in #10554
• Update datafusion by @Jeadie in #10422
• Improve full-text search indexing performance by @sgrebnov in #10464
• feat(mysql): add mysql_zero_date_behavior parameter (null|error) by @phillipleblanc in #10573
• fix(snowflake): declare private_key in connector PARAMETERS (fixes #10517) by @claudespice in #10559
• Honour CARGO_TARGET_DIR in Makefiles by @Jeadie in #10569
• Enable cosine_distance pushdown to DuckDB accelerator via array_cosine_distance by @sgrebnov in #10564
• fix: Update test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #10570
• fix: Update tpch benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #10560
• feat(snapshots): make snapshots an optional feature by @phillipleblanc in #10574
• Enforce read-only API key restrictions on Flight DoGet and async query paths by @Jeadie in #10551
• Improved security posture on Github workflows by @Jeadie in #10556
• fix: Update datafusion-table-providers to improve SqlTable filter pushdown by @sgrebnov in #10595
• feat(secrets): add HashiCorp Vault secret store by @phillipleblanc in #10561
• fix: delegate update() in UpsertDedupTableProvider to inner provider by @claudespice in #10593
• Add DuckDB vector engine support by @lukekim in #10562
• Sharepoint - add object-store listing connector with expanded auth and write support by @lukekim in #10473
• fix: Install protoc from source by @peasee in #10597
• Enable DML support for PostgreSQL data connector by @phillipleblanc in #10446
• feat(postgres): support inline PEM sslrootcert by @claudespice in #10578
• Add foreign key metadata discovery to PostgreSQL Catalog by @sgrebnov in #10849
• Add Snowflake DML support by @lukekim in #10747
• Add MongoDB Change Streams support by @lukekim in #10813
• Add user-defined functions by @lukekim in #10571
• Add table user functions and gate HTTP servers by @lukekim in #10675
• feat: add on-demand dataset loading by @phillipleblanc in #10629
• feat(runtime): declared-schema deferred datasets by @phillipleblanc in #10669
• feat(spicepod, runtime): add columns[].type / nullable + lenient type parser by @phillipleblanc in #10661
• Replace external smb crate with internal SMB 3.1.1 client by @phillipleblanc in #10516
• Add unified query cancellation across all paths by @lukekim in #10390
• Add dynamic HTTP request headers by @lukekim in #10604
• feat(http): Support dynamic HTTP connector request params from subqueries by @lukekim in #10636
• feat(http): pass through HTTP metadata columns with JSON schema decomposition by @lukekim in #10679
• Add nolimit HTTP pagination max pages by @lukekim in #10673
• Add shared HTTP rate control for connectors by @lukekim in #10648
• Use origin label instead of name for HTTP rate control metrics by @lukekim in #10689
• fix(http): reject OR across different HTTP filter columns by @lukekim in #10625
• Add provider-aware LLM prompt caching by @lukekim in #10645
• Add searchable registry mode for LLM tools by @lukekim in #10647
• feat: refresh_mode: snapshot + SQLite/Turso WAL flush + Cayenne metastore slice by @phillipleblanc in #10651
• feat: per-principal cache namespacing for SQL/search/caching-accelerator by @lukekim in #10702
• Add self-hosted Spice connector support by @phillipleblanc in #10546
• Add Delta Lake Azure tenant parameter by @phillipleblanc in #10671
• Support OAuth2 client credentials in 'spice cloud login' by @ewgenius in #10586
• Add configurable allowed_hosts for MCP by @lukekim in #10638
• fix: make Helm chart probes configurable by @peasee in #10696
• Strip high-cardinality datasets dim from anonymous telemetry by @lukekim in #10711
• feat(elasticsearch): direct FTS engine config + index lifecycle and ingestion controls by @lukekim in #10672
• Add DuckDB HNSW vector index support for accelerated views by @sgrebnov in #10695
• Rewrite DuckDB vector search SQL to activate HNSW_INDEX_SCAN by @sgrebnov in #10674
• Fix DuckDB HNSW vector indexes lost after data refresh by @sgrebnov in #10668
• Fix DuckDB DELETE/UPDATE on full and caching refresh mode datasets by @phillipleblanc in #10632
• Fix DuckLake connector: downcast, module registration, schema discovery, and S3 credentials by @sgrebnov in #10650
• Fix federation pushing denied functions inside subqueries to remote engines by @phillipleblanc in #10692
• fix(caching): honour refresh_on_startup: always in caching mode by @phillipleblanc in #10594
• fix(iceberg): rebuild storage factory when Hadoop catalog scheme is inferred by @sgrebnov in #10601
• Pipeline CDC ingestion: overlap source reads with batch apply by @lukekim in #10676
• fix: add NULL check to CDC primary key extraction by @lukekim in #10684
• Properly handle nullability during CDC processing by @krinart in #10803
• Flatten scheduler config and rename partition management → partition assignment by @lukekim in #10450
• Improve NSQL UX and harden internal LLM tools by @lukekim in #10715
• Support Responses API across model providers by @lukekim in #10724
• Update xAI default model and handle Grok model retirements by @Jeadie in #10723
• Improve cli table layout by @krinart in #10725
• TLS cert hot-reload (mTLS plan M1) by @phillipleblanc in #10727
• Fix DuckLake catalog include filter being ignored by @phillipleblanc in #10738
• Promote DuckLake Catalog and Data Connector to Beta quality by @sgrebnov in #10743
• feat(ducklake): Support INSERT on catalog tables with read_write access by @sgrebnov in #10744
• perf(cdc): coalesce envelopes and overlap commits in apply pipeline by @lukekim in #10745
• feat: Allow full version tags in spicepod version by @peasee in #10748
• Add Arrow primary key upserts by @lukekim in #10749
• fix(snapshot): keep refresh_mode snapshot read-only by @phillipleblanc in #10752
• feat(tls): public mTLS for HTTP and Flight (channel + identity modes) by @phillipleblanc in #10753
• perf(cayenne): lock-free deletion caches with bloom-prefiltered probe by @lukekim in #10756
• fix(security): close API key timing-position leak and remote-UDF SSRF by @lukekim in #10757
• Fix 'wait_until_dependent_tables_are_ready' for catalogs by @phillipleblanc in #10758
• Fixes for views and resolved tables on 'spice refresh' CLI by @phillipleblanc in #10759
• Implement FlightSQL CommandStatementSubstraitPlan support by @lukekim in #10761
• feat(connectors): mTLS client cert support for flightsql and spiceai connectors by @phillipleblanc in #10764
• Allow arbitrary filenames when specifying spicepod path + kind validation by @krinart in #10777
• fix: ignore field metadata in schema compatibility check in index_table_scan by @Jeadie in #10778
• Display pushed-down limits in EXPLAIN TREE output by @lukekim in #10779
• fix: enable streaming append for Kafka with Cayenne accelerator by @lukekim in #10780
• fix: bound chunked-index intermediate batch size to prevent OOM by @phillipleblanc in #10783
• fix: label all columns in spice cloud metrics table output by @claudespice in #10784
• fix: use checked arithmetic for Turso integer-millis timestamp read path by @claudespice in #10786
• fix: use checked arithmetic in timestamp-to-nanosecond conversions by @claudespice in #10666
• Upgrade to DuckDB v1.5.2 by @sgrebnov in #10788
• Improve CDC ingestion performance by @lukekim in #10789
• Fix tool_search/tool_invoke spans by @lukekim in #10791
• Add Cayenne inline mutations and benchmark coverage by @lukekim in #10792
• Ensure we always resolve table names in distributed mode/metadata by @Jeadie in #10793
• Remove permanent errors from DynamoDB Streams by @krinart in #10794
• Add expanded view mode for wide table display in SQL REPL by @lukekim in #10797
• Fix Cayenne CDC schema mismatch error by @sgrebnov in #10800
• Executors should create catalog tables on join by @Jeadie in #10807
• Add compressed file support for listing connectors by @lukekim in #10809
• Improve Cayenne mutation, scan, and inline memtable scaling by @lukekim in #10811
• Add range fallback for large join filters by @lukekim in #10816
• Improve Cayenne join filter pushdown by @lukekim in #10818
• Synchronize Cayenne partition commits across partitions by @phillipleblanc in #10819
• fix: Deny nondistributed cayenne catalog by @peasee in #10821
• Enable parallel Cayenne Vortex writes by @lukekim in #10822
• Expand Arrow type handling in formatting and Elasticsearch by @lukekim in #10825
• Add response.output_text.delta to responses API by @krinart in #10828
• feat(cayenne): add join filter propagation and no-spill Q21 planning by @lukekim in #10840
• Upgrade Turso to v0.6.0 by @sgrebnov in #10843
• feat(cli): add spice feedback command to open community Slack by @lukekim in #10856
• Upgrade iceberg to v0.9.1 by @sgrebnov in #10859
• feat(cluster): per-request executor readiness gate on /v1/ready by @phillipleblanc in #10860
• fix: Require dim-side statistics for CayennePropagateFilterAcrossEquiJoinKeys by @sgrebnov in #10863
• fix: Debezium schema evolution breaks dataset init on reload by @claudespice in #10144
• fix(mssql): Push topK limit to SQL Server for non-nullable sort columns by @Jeadie in #10621
• fix(ScyllaDB): disable physical filter pushdown by @sgrebnov in #10772
• fix: handle typed NULLs and prevent overflow in DynamoDB DML type conversions by @krinart in #10511
• fix: use InsertOp::Overwrite in DynamoDB bootstrap scan_and_overwrite_accelerator by @krinart in #10639
• Improve DynamoDB Bootstrap performance by @krinart in #10616
• fix: preserve field and schema metadata in Vortex type transformation by @lukekim in #10628
• fix: GH connector - explicitly use AWS LC RS crypto provider for jwt by @phillipleblanc in #10619
• fix: add snapshot mode guards to delete_from/update and delegate DML in SwappableTableProvider by @phillipleblanc in #10685
• Persist HTTP rate-control state in object storage by @lukekim in #10697
• Rate limit metrics HTTP endpoint by @lukekim in #10162
• feat(geo): add optional spatial SQL UDF support by @lukekim in #10833
• feat(cayenne): CDC throughput, compaction, scan caching, and benchmarks by @lukekim in #10852
• fix(cayenne): fix Vortex panic on highly compressible data by @sgrebnov in #10855
• fix(cayenne): Read live protected snapshots after cleanup grace period by @sgrebnov in #10901
• fix: Disable Cayenne HashJoin rewriter optimizer by @sgrebnov in #10882
• Fix GetFlightInfo vs DoGet Flight Schema by @krinart in #10864
• fix(search): preserve column casing in /v1/search primary key plumbing by @claudespice in #10909
• fix(object-store): dedupe s3 url style auto-detection log by @phillipleblanc in #10898
• Improve Spice CLI manifest editing and direct command modes by @lukekim in #10815
• Persist Kafka CDC offsets in sidecar tables by @lukekim in #10823
• feat(task-history): record Ballista stages for distributed queries by @phillipleblanc in #10831
• Add '#[deny(clippy::missing_trait_methods)]' to wrapper/delegation trait impls by @Jeadie in #10795
• Optimize Cayenne catalog maintenance paths by @lukekim in #10904
• Centralize DuckDB settings for accelerator by @ewgenius in #10895
• deps(ballista): bump to 47e2b494 to fix S3 shuffle reads under cluster mode by @phillipleblanc in #10910
• Authorization header + Bump async-openai + responses_adapter fix by @krinart in #10911
• Tune accelerators by storage profile by @lukekim in #10913
• feat: add dataset-level on_schema_change config by @lukekim in #10908
• Handle NULL sentinel for nullable partition expressions by @Jeadie in #10880
• fix: Remove Cayenne Catalog from catalog registration by @peasee in #10914
• Add catalog name to foreign key metadata in postgres catalog by @Jeadie in #10917
• Cayenne perf: eliminate redundant clones, PK point-lookup fanout fix, IN-list rewrite + microbench coverage by @lukekim in #10916
• fix(turso-shared): retry on Turso BEGIN CONCURRENT "Write-write conflict" by @lukekim in #10946
• Vendor Vortex DataFusion for Cayenne by @lukekim in #10933
• perf(cayenne): background retention + enable CDC pipelining for retention-configured tables by @lukekim in #10936
• feat(cayenne): scale metastore pool to 32 + vs_duckdb_scaling benches (1→128 concurrency, sqlite + turso lanes) by @lukekim in #10943
• feat(mcp): support auth for streamable HTTP tools by @phillipleblanc in #10927
• Explicit error if v1/search requests a table without search index by @Jeadie in #10968
• Fix spicepod loading failure when directory name contains dots by @sgrebnov in #10958
• Extend append tests with arrow engine configurations by @sgrebnov in #10959
• Remove dataset on_schema_change Policy from rc.5 release notes by @sgrebnov in #10964
• Skip tpcds_q78 for Cayenne engine at SF100 by @sgrebnov in #10966
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots May-20 by @app/github-actions in #10952
• Fix #10951: UdtfExec invariant Vec lengths must match children count by @phillipleblanc in #10953
• docs(release): update v2.0.0-rc.5 notes with latest trunk PRs by @lukekim in #10949
• Remove eval related things for v2.0.0 by @Jeadie in #10945
• build(deps): bump ubuntu from 24.04 to 26.04 in the docker-dependencies group by @app/dependabot in #10883
• fix: Add publish = false to chbench-driver by @sgrebnov in #10939
• [Bug] Timing between reconnect and AllocateInitialPartitions leaves connection without flight_sql_client by @Jeadie in #10805
• Fix: refresh_mode: snapshot reports Ready with empty data when no snapshot exists by @sgrebnov in #10979
• fix(cluster): gate scheduler readiness on executor partition loads by @phillipleblanc in #10992
• fix: handle EXISTS/NOT EXISTS subqueries in federation analyzer by @sgrebnov in #10996
• Refactor spice dataset configuration command by @Jeadie in #10999
• fix: preserve field and schema metadata in Vortex physical schema calculation by @claudespice in #11013
• fix: validate Snowflake account identifiers and auth config by @Jeadie in #11024
• Fix Unity Catalog connector deserialization failure with OSS Unity Catalog by @ewgenius in #11026
• feat(cayenne): allow inline writes with pending deletions (deletes/upserts) by @sgrebnov in #11031
• Expose metadata descriptions via PostgreSQL UDFs by @lukekim in #11032
• Remove default runtime features - enable explicitly in spiced by @phillipleblanc in #11037
• feat(cayenne): fast-path CDC deletes by extracting PK values from filters by @sgrebnov in #11049
• Cayenne optimizer rules: auto relevance test for q21-shape (all-Cayenne CH-Bench) and runtime rule selection by @lukekim in #11050
• refactor(cdc): reduce CDC sub-batch splits for interleaved upsert/delete workloads by @sgrebnov in #11051
• fix(snowflake): enforce function deny-list in federation pushdown by @claudespice in #11057
• fix(mcp): trace external server tool calls in task history by @ewgenius in #11058
• perf(cdc): Last-write-wins dedup in group_into_sub_batches to reduce sub-batch splits by @sgrebnov in #11059
• PM edits to v2.0.0-rc5 by @lukekim in #11067
• fix(snowflake): wire deny-list in extracted connector crate (#10703) by @claudespice in #11071
• perf(cayenne): keep CDC upsert PK keysets resident to avoid per-batch full-table rebuilds by @lukekim in #11074
• Fix metadata on search indexing by @Jeadie in #11080
• feat(cayenne): merge-on-read position deletes for PK upsert tables + memory-pool accounting by @lukekim in #11085
• perf(cayenne): scale CDC inline flush caps with memory + storage class by @lukekim in #11087
• feat(cluster): report per-executor table statistics so distributed JoinSelection can size joins by @phillipleblanc in #11089
• Improve Cayenne CDC write and compaction path tracing by @sgrebnov in #11091
• Support tuple-IN composite PK extraction in Cayenne delete fast-path by @sgrebnov in #11093
• feat(cluster): NDV-aware executor stats so CDC q18 join swap fires by @phillipleblanc in #11098
• feat(cayenne): maintain join-sizing stats on the write path by @phillipleblanc in #11104
• fix(cache): run periodic moka maintenance for idle caches by @phillipleblanc in #11106
• Upgrade to DuckDB 1.5.3 + statically link the VSS (HNSW) extension by @sgrebnov in #11107
• Fix fetched_at for HTTP connector by @Jeadie in #11116
• fix(cayenne): tombstone inline-checkpointed rows on upsert to prevent duplicate PKs by @sgrebnov in #11129
• feat: dedicated compaction runtime for Cayenne + CDC pipelining, protected snapshots, and test coverage by @lukekim in #11130
• Add datasets dimension to the query_executions metric by @phillipleblanc in #11138
• Fix #11137: localpod child not tracking parent refreshes with in-memory (arrow) parent accelerator by @phillipleblanc in #11139
• Fix Windows build: vendor the VSS extension (drop nested submodule) by @phillipleblanc in #11140
• fix(spiceai): keep correlated subqueries out of JOIN ON for Spice Cloud federation by @phillipleblanc in #11143
• Refactor spice dataset configuration command by @Jeadie in #10999
• feat(cayenne): sharded parallel Vortex encode with key/time clustering by @lukekim in #11144
• fix(cluster): prevent DoPut write pipeline self-deadlock under ingest backpressure by @phillipleblanc in #11160
• fix(cayenne): only warn on genuine protected-snapshot amplification by @lukekim in #11158

Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v1.11.6...v2.0.0

Announcing the release of Spice v1.11.3! 🛠️

Spice v1.11.3 is a patch release fixing schema consistency issues in the S3 and FlightSQL data connectors, improving CDC cache invalidation, and enhancing the HTTP data connector's error handling and response metadata.

What's New in v1.11.3​

S3 Data Connector Fix​

Fixed an issue where queries using metadata columns (location, last_modified, size) on S3 datasets produced Input field name does not match with the projection expression errors (#9647). This occurred when projecting metadata columns with filters or scalar functions (e.g., SELECT lower(location) FROM table WHERE location = '...'), and when projection returned no matching files.

FlightSQL Schema Consistency​

Fixed an issue where the Flight SQL JDBC driver returned Unsupported ArrowType Utf8View errors when performing ::TEXT type casts (#9253). The FlightSQL endpoint now maps view types (e.g., Utf8View, BinaryView) to their non-view equivalents, ensuring compatibility with JDBC and ODBC clients.

CDC Cache Invalidation​

Fixed an issue where the SQL results cache was invalidated on every change stream poll, even when zero records were returned (#9472). This caused near-total cache miss rates for datasets using refresh_mode: changes (e.g., DynamoDB Streams), effectively rendering the cache useless. Cache invalidation now only occurs when a change batch contains actual data changes.

HTTP Data Connector Improvements​

• HTTP error responses (e.g., 5xx) are now excluded from the cache, preventing transient server errors from polluting cached results.
• Added a response_headers column (Map type) to HTTP responses, providing access to response header metadata in query results.

Contributors​

• @krinart
• @sgrebnov

Breaking Changes​

No breaking changes.

Cookbook Updates​

No new cookbook recipes.

The Spice Cookbook includes 86 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.

Upgrading​

To upgrade to v1.11.3, use one of the following methods:

CLI:

spice upgrade

Homebrew:

brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice

Docker:

Pull the spiceai/spiceai:1.11.3 image:

docker pull spiceai/spiceai:1.11.3

For available tags, see DockerHub.

Helm:

helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai --version 1.11.3

AWS Marketplace:

Spice is available in the AWS Marketplace.

What's Changed​

Changelog​

• fix(s3): Fix metadata column schema mismatches in projected queries by @sgrebnov in #9664
• s3_metadata_columns tests: include test for location outside table prefix by @sgrebnov in #9676
• Fix Flight SQL schema consistency: expand view types and verify field names by @sgrebnov in #9438
• Improve CDC cache invalidation by @krinart in #9651
• Skip caching http error response + add response_headers by @krinart in #9670

Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v1.11.2...v1.11.3

Announcing the release of Spice v1.10.4! 🛠️

v1.10.4 is a patch release with fixes for Kafka/Debezium batch commits, ABFSS URL support for Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, and improved column projection handling for location metadata columns.

What's New in v1.10.4​

Additional Improvements & Bug Fixes​

• Reliability: Fixed Kafka and Debezium batch commit handling to properly commit offsets across all partitions. Previously, only the last message's offset was committed, which could cause message loss when batches contained messages from multiple partitions.
• Reliability: Added support for abfss:// URL prefix for Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, in addition to the existing abfs:// prefix. The abfss scheme indicates secure (TLS) connections to ADLS Gen2.
• Reliability: Fixed column projection order mismatch when querying datasets with location metadata columns (e.g., SELECT location, day, size FROM dataset). Queries that specified columns in a different order than the schema would fail with "column types must match schema types" errors.
• Developer Experience: Added detailed diagnostic logging for union projection pushdown optimization failures in cluster mode. When projection pushdown cannot be applied, debug-level logs now provide additional context to help identify the root cause.

Contributors​

• @krinart
• @phillipleblanc

Breaking Changes​

No breaking changes.

Cookbook Updates​

No major cookbook updates.

The Spice Cookbook includes 84 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.

Upgrading​

To upgrade to v1.10.4, use one of the following methods:

CLI:

spice upgrade

Homebrew:

brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice

Docker:

Pull the spiceai/spiceai:1.10.4 image:

docker pull spiceai/spiceai:1.10.4

For available tags, see DockerHub.

Helm:

helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai

AWS Marketplace:

🎉 Spice is now available in the AWS Marketplace!

What's Changed​

Changelog​

• Update acknowledgements by @app/github-actions in #8695
• Proper batch commit for kafka/debezium by @krinart in #8671
• Add support for abfss by @krinart in #8706
• cluster: UnionProjectionPushdownOptimizer: Add projection pushdown diagnostics for union children by @phillipleblanc in #8734
• Fix column projection order mismatch with location metadata columns by @phillipleblanc in #8738

Announcing the release of Spice v1.10.3! 🚀

v1.10.3 is a patch release with improved startup reliability, fixes for Azure BlobFS versioned containers, S3 custom endpoint query resolution, and a fix for the OpenAI Responses API.

What's New in v1.10.3​

Additional Improvements & Bug Fixes​

• Reliability: Telemetry exporter initialization now runs asynchronously, preventing blocked startup in environments with network restrictions (e.g., Kubernetes with restrictive network policies).
• Reliability: Fixed an issue where queries on Azure Blob containers with versioning enabled would fail with "Azure does not support suffix range requests" error in distributed query mode.
• Reliability: Fixed S3 location-based queries against custom S3 endpoints (e.g., MinIO, LocalStack). Queries with location predicates on datasets using s3_endpoint and s3_region parameters now correctly route to the configured endpoint instead of defaulting to AWS S3.
• Reliability: Fixed "project index out of bounds" errors in the query optimizer when union children have mismatched schemas. The optimizer now validates schema compatibility before applying projection pushdown.
• Reliability: Fixed an issue where the OpenAI Responses API (/v1/responses) was not working correctly.

Contributors​

• @lukekim
• @phillipleblanc

Breaking Changes​

No breaking changes.

Cookbook Updates​

No major cookbook updates.

The Spice Cookbook includes 84 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.

Upgrading​

To upgrade to v1.10.3, use one of the following methods:

CLI:

spice upgrade

Homebrew:

brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice

Docker:

Pull the spiceai/spiceai:1.10.3 image:

docker pull spiceai/spiceai:1.10.3

For available tags, see DockerHub.

Helm:

helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai

AWS Marketplace:

🎉 Spice is now available in the AWS Marketplace!

What's Changed​

Changelog​

• Upgrade to openai-async v0.32 by @lukekim in #8635
• Fix issue with location predicate for custom S3 endpoints + regression integration test by @phillipleblanc in #8668
• fix: Validate schema match before projection pushdown in UnionProjectionPushdownOptimizer by @phillipleblanc in #8669
• Start the anonymous telemetry exporter asynchronously by @phillipleblanc in #8679
• fix: Azure does not support suffix range requests by @phillipleblanc in #8685

Announcing the release of Spice v1.9.0-stable! 🌶

v1.9.0-stable introduces Spice Cayenne, a new high-performance data accelerator built on the Vortex columnar format that delivers better than DuckDB performance without single-file scaling limitations, and a preview of Multi-Node Distributed Query based on Apache Ballista. v1.9.0 also upgrades to DataFusion v50, DuckDB v1.4.2, and Delta-Kernel v0.16 for even higher query performance, expands search capabilities with full-text search on views and multi-column embeddings, and delivers many additional features and improvements.

What's New in v1.9.0​

Cayenne Data Accelerator (Beta)​

Introducing Cayenne: SQL as an Acceleration Format: A new high-performance Data Accelerator that simplifies multi-file data acceleration by using an embedded database (SQLite) for metadata while storing data in the Vortex columnar format, a Linux Foundation project. Cayenne delivers query and ingestion performance better than DuckDB's file-based acceleration without DuckDB's memory overhead and the scaling challenges of single DuckDB files.

Cayenne uses SQLite to manage acceleration metadata (schemas, snapshots, statistics, file tracking) through simple SQL transactions, while storing data in Vortex's compressed columnar format. This architecture provides:

Key Features:

• SQLite + Vortex Architecture: All metadata is stored in SQLite tables with standard SQL transactions, while data lives in Vortex's compressed, chunked columnar format designed for zero-copy access and efficient scanning.
• Simplified Operations: No complex file hierarchies, no JSON/Avro metadata files, no separate catalog servers—just SQL tables and Vortex data files. The entire metadata schema is intentionally simple for maximum reliability.
• Fast Metadata Access: Single SQL query retrieves all metadata needed for query planning—no multiple round trips to storage, no S3 throttling, no reconstruction of metadata state from scattered files.
• Efficient Small Changes: Dramatically reduces small file proliferation. Snapshots are just rows in SQLite tables, not new files on disk. Supports millions of snapshots without performance degradation.
• High Concurrency: Changes consist of two steps: stage Vortex files (if any), then run a single SQL transaction. Much faster conflict resolution and support for many more concurrent updates than file-based formats.
• Advanced Data Lifecycle: Full ACID transactions, delete support, and retention SQL execution on refresh commit.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: s3:my_table
    name: accelerated_data_30d
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: cayenne
      mode: file
      refresh_mode: append
      retention_sql: DELETE FROM accelerated_data WHERE created_at < NOW() - INTERVAL '30 days'

Note, the Cayenne Data Accelerator is in Beta with limitations.

For more details, refer to the Cayenne Documentation, the Vortex project, and the DuckLake announcement that partly inspired this design.

Multi-Node Distributed Query (Preview)​

Apache Ballista Integration: Spice now supports distributed query execution based on Apache Ballista, enabling distributed queries across multiple executor nodes for improved performance on large datasets. This feature is in preview in v1.9.0.

Architecture:

A distributed Spice cluster consists of:

• Scheduler: Responsible for distributed query planning and work queue management for the executor fleet
• Executors: One or more nodes responsible for running physical query plans

Getting Started:

Start a scheduler instance using an existing Spicepod. The scheduler is the only spiced instance that needs to be configured:

# Start scheduler (note the flight bind address override if you want it reachable outside localhost)
spiced --cluster-mode scheduler --flight 0.0.0.0:50051

Start one or more executors configured with the scheduler's flight URI:

# Start executor (automatically selects a free port if 50051 is taken)
spiced --cluster-mode executor --scheduler-url spiced://localhost:50051

Query Execution:

Queries run through the scheduler will now show a distributed_plan in EXPLAIN output, demonstrating how the query is distributed across executor nodes:

EXPLAIN SELECT count(id) FROM my_dataset;

Current Limitations:

• Accelerated datasets are currently not supported. This feature is designed for querying partitioned data lake formats (Parquet, Delta Lake, Iceberg, etc.)
• The feature is in preview and may have stability or performance limitations
• Specific acceleration support is planned for future releases

For more details, refer to the Distributed Query Documentation.

DataFusion v50 Upgrade​

Spice.ai is built on the Apache DataFusion query engine. The v50 release brings significant performance improvements and enhanced reliability:

Performance Improvements 🚀:

• Dynamic Filter Pushdown: Enhanced dynamic filter pushdown for custom ExecutionPlans, ensuring filters propagate correctly through all physical operators for improved query performance.

• Partition Pruning: Expanded partition pruning support ensures that unnecessary partitions are skipped when filters are not used, reducing data scanning overhead and improving query execution times.

Apache Spark Compatible Functions: Added support for Spark-compatible functions including array, bit_get/bit_count, bitmap_count, crc32/sha1, date_add/date_sub, if, last_day, like/ilike, luhn_check, mod/pmod, next_day, parse_url, rint, and width_bucket.

Bug Fixes & Reliability: Resolved issues with partition name validation and empty execution plans when vector index lists are empty. Fixed timestamp support for partition expressions, enabling better partitioning for time-series data.

See the Apache DataFusion 50.0.3 Release for more details.

DuckDB v1.4.2 Upgrade and Accelerator Improvements​

DuckDB v1.4.2: DuckDB has been upgraded to v1.4.2, which includes several performance optimizations.

Composite ART Index Support: DuckDB in Spice now supports composite (multi-column) Adaptive Radix Tree (ART) indexes for accelerated table scans. When queries filter on multiple columns fully covered by a composite index, the optimizer automatically uses index scans instead of full table scans, delivering significant performance improvements for selective queries.

Example configuration:

datasets:
  - from: file://data.parquet
    name: sales
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      indexes:
        '(region, product_id)': enabled

Performance example with composite index on 7.5M rows:

SELECT * FROM sales WHERE region = 'US' AND product_id = 12345;

-- Without index: 0.282s
-- With composite index (region, product_id): 0.037s
-- Performance improvement: 7.6x faster with composite index

DuckDB Intermediate Materialization: Queries with indexes now use intermediate materialization (WITH ... AS MATERIALIZED) to leverage faster index scans. Currently supported for non-federated queries (query_federation: disabled) against a single table with indexes only. When predicates cover more columns than the index, the optimizer rewrites queries to first materialize index-filtered results, then apply remaining predicates. This optimization can deliver significant performance improvements for selective queries.

Example configuration:

datasets:
  - from: file://sales_data.parquet
    name: sales
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      mode: file
      params:
        query_federation: disabled # Required currently for intermediate materialization
      indexes:
        '(region, product_id)': enabled

Performance example:

-- Query with indexed columns (region, product_id) plus additional filter (amount)
SELECT * FROM sales
WHERE region = 'US' AND product_id = 12345 AND amount > 1000;

-- Optimized execution time: 0.031s (with intermediate materialization)
-- Standard execution time: 0.108s (without optimization)
-- Performance improvement: ~3.5x faster

The optimizer automatically rewrites the query to:

WITH _intermediate_materialize AS MATERIALIZED (
  SELECT * FROM sales WHERE region = 'US' AND product_id = 12345
)
SELECT * FROM _intermediate_materialize WHERE amount > 1000;

Parquet Buffering for Partitioned Writes: DuckDB partitioned writes in table mode now support Parquet buffering, reducing memory usage and improving write performance for large datasets.

Retention SQL on Refresh Commit: DuckDB accelerations now support running retention SQL on refresh commit, enabling automatic data cleanup and lifecycle management during refresh operations.

UTC Timezone for DuckDB: DuckDB now uses UTC as the default timezone, ensuring consistent behavior for time-based queries across different environments.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: s3://my_bucket/large_table/
    name: partitioned_data
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      mode: file
      retention:
        sql: DELETE FROM partitioned_data WHERE event_time < NOW() - INTERVAL '7 days'

For more details, refer to the DuckDB Data Accelerator Documentation.

HTTP Data Connector​

• Querying endpoints as tables: The HTTP/HTTPS Data Connectors now supports querying HTTP endpoints directly as tables in SQL queries with dynamic filters. This feature transforms REST APIs into queryable data sources, making it easy to integrate external service data.

• Query HTTP endpoint that returns structured data (JSON, CSV, etc.) as if it were a database table

• Configurable retry logic, timeouts, and POST request support for more complex API interactions

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: https://api.tvmaze.com
    name: tvmaze
    params:
      file_format: json
      max_retries: 3
      client_timeout: 10s
      allowed_request_paths: /search/people
      request_query_filters: enabled
      request_body_filters: enabled

Example SQL query:

SELECT request_path, request_query, content
FROM tvmaze
WHERE request_path = '/search/people' and request_query = 'q=michael'
LIMIT 10;

If a request_body is supplied it will be posted to the endpoint:

Example SQL query:

SELECT request_path, request_query, content
FROM tvmaze
WHERE request_path = '/search/people' and request_query = 'q=michael' and request_body = '{"name": "michael"}'
LIMIT 10;

HTTP endpoints can be accelerated using refresh_sql:

datasets:
  - from: https://api.tvmaze.com
    name: tvmaze
    params:
      file_format: json
      allowed_request_paths: /search/people
      request_query_filters: enabled
      request_body_filters: enabled
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      refresh_mode: full
      refresh_sql: |
        SELECT request_path, request_query, content 
        FROM tvmaze
        WHERE request_path = '/search/people'
          AND request_query IN ('q=michael', 'q=luke')

For more details, refer to the HTTP Data Connector Documentation.

DynamoDB Data Connector Improvements​

Improved Query Performance: The DynamoDB Data Connector now includes improved filter handling for edge cases, parallel scan support for faster data ingestion, and better error handling for misconfigured queries. These improvements enable more reliable and performant access to DynamoDB data.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: dynamodb:my_table
    name: ddb_data
    params:
      scan_segments: 10 # Default `auto` which calculates optimal segments based on number of rows

For more details, refer to the DynamoDB Data Connector Documentation.

S3 Data Connector Improvements​

S3 Versioning Support: Spice now supports S3 Versioning for all connectors using object-store (S3, Delta Lake, etc.), ensuring range reads over versioned files are atomically correct. When S3 versioning is enabled, Spice automatically tracks version IDs during file discovery and uses them for all subsequent range reads, preventing inconsistencies from concurrent file modifications.

Current limitations:

• Multi-file connections (e.g., partitioned datasets) do not yet support version tracking across all files
• Version tracking is automatic when S3 versioning is enabled on the bucket

S3 Single-File Refresh Skipping: Spice now optimizes S3 single-file dataset refreshes by caching file metadata (ETag, Version ID, size, timestamp) and skipping unnecessary data fetches when the underlying file hasn't changed. This optimization dramatically reduces bandwidth usage and improves refresh performance for scenarios where data doesn't change frequently. The feature is enabled by default for accelerated S3 single-file datasets and includes metrics tracking for skipped refreshes.

Example configuration:

datasets:
  - from: s3://my-bucket/data.parquet
    name: s3_data
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      refresh_check_interval: 10s

When the file's metadata hasn't changed between refresh checks, Spice will skip the data fetch entirely, logging:

Skipping refresh for dataset 's3_data': file metadata unchanged

For more details, refer to the S3 Data Connector Documentation.

Search & Embeddings Enhancements​

Full-Text Search on Views: Full-text search indexes are now supported on views, enabling advanced search scenarios over pre-aggregated or transformed data. This extends the power of Spice's search capabilities beyond base datasets.

Multi-Column Embeddings on Views: Views now support embedding columns, enabling vector search and semantic retrieval on view data. This is useful for search over aggregated or joined datasets.

Vector Engines on Views: Vector search engines are now available for views, enabling similarity search over complex queries and transformations.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

views:
  - name: aggregated_reviews
    sql: SELECT review_id, review_text FROM reviews WHERE rating > 4
    embeddings:
      - column: review_text
        model: openai:text-embedding-3-small

For more details, refer to the Search Documentation and Embeddings Documentation.

Dedicated Query Thread Pool (Now Enabled by Default)​

Dedicated Query Thread Pool: Query execution and accelerated refreshes now run on their own dedicated thread pool, separate from the HTTP server. This prevents heavy query workloads from slowing down API responses, keeping health checks fast and avoiding unnecessary Kubernetes pod restarts under load.

This feature was opt-in in previous releases and is now enabled by default. To disable it and revert to the previous behavior, add the following spicepod.yaml configuration:

runtime:
  params:
    dedicated_thread_pool: none

For more details, refer to the Runtime Configuration Documentation.

Query Performance Optimizations​

Stale-While-Revalidate Cache Control: Query results now support "stale-while-revalidate" cache control, allowing stale cached data to be served immediately while asynchronously refreshing the cache entry in the background. This improves response times for frequently-accessed queries while maintaining data freshness. Requires cache key type to be set to "sql (raw)" for proper operation.

Optimized Prepared Statements: Prepared statement handling has been optimized for better performance with parameterized queries, reducing planning overhead and improving execution time for repeated queries.

Large RecordBatch Chunking: Large Arrow RecordBatch objects are now automatically chunked to control memory usage during query execution, preventing memory exhaustion for queries returning large result sets.

Query Result Caching: Compressed Encoding, Stale-While-Revalidate Cache Control​

Zstd Compression Encoding: Query result caching now supports optional Zstandard (zstd) compression encoding to reduce memory usage for cached query results. This is particularly beneficial for large result sets, reducing cache memory footprint while maintaining fast decompression times. Encoding can be configured via the encoding parameter with options none (default) or zstd.

Example configuration:

runtime:
  caching:
    sql_results:
      enabled: true
      max_size: 128MiB
      item_ttl: 1m
      encoding: zstd # Enable zstd compression

HTTP Cache-Control Support: The query result cache now supports the stale-while-revalidate Cache-Control directive, enabling faster response times by serving stale cached results immediately while asynchronously refreshing the cache in the background. This feature is particularly useful for applications that can tolerate slightly stale data in exchange for improved performance.

Example configuration:

runtime:
  caching:
    sql_results:
      enabled: true
      max_size: 128MiB
      item_ttl: 1m
      stale_while_revalidate_ttl: 1m # serve stale items for up to 1 minute after `item_ttl` expires

How it works:

When a cache entry is stale but within the stale-while-revalidate window, Spice will:

1. Immediately return the stale cached result to the client
2. Asynchronously re-execute the query in the background to refresh the cache
3. Future requests will use the refreshed data

Configuration:

Use the Cache-Control HTTP header with the stale-while-revalidate directive:

Cache-Control: max-age=300, stale-while-revalidate=60

This configuration caches results for 5 minutes (300 seconds), and allows serving stale results for an additional 60 seconds while refreshing in the background.

Requirements:

• Must use plan or raw SQL cache keys (set cache_key_type to sql or plan in results_caching configuration)
• Background revalidation re-executes queries through the normal query path
• Timestamp tracking automatically determines cache entry age for staleness checks

Example configuration via HTTP header:

GET /v1/sql
Cache-Control: max-age=600, stale-while-revalidate=120
X-Cache-Key-Type: sql

This feature improves application responsiveness while ensuring data freshness through background updates.

For more details, refer to the Results Caching Documentation.

Security & Reliability Improvements​

Enhanced HTTP Client Security: HTTP client usage across the runtime has been hardened with improved TLS validation, certificate pinning for critical endpoints, and better error handling for network failures.

ODBC Connector Improvements: Removed unwrap calls from the ODBC connector, improving error handling and reliability. Fixed secret handling and Kubernetes secret integration.

CLI Permissions Hardening: Tightened file permissions for the CLI and install script, ensuring secure defaults for configuration files and credentials.

Oracle Instant Client Pinning: Oracle Instant Client downloads are now pinned to specific SHAs, ensuring reproducible builds and preventing supply chain attacks.

AWS Authentication Improvements​

Improved Credential Retry Logic: AWS SDK credential initialization has been significantly improved with more robust retry logic and better error handling. The system now automatically retries transient credential resolution failures using Fibonacci backoff, allowing Spice to tolerate extended AWS outages (up to ~48 hours) without manual intervention.

Key features:

• Automatic retry with backoff: Implements Fibonacci backoff for transient credential failures (network issues, temporary AWS service disruptions)
• Better error handling: Distinguishes between retryable errors (connector errors) and non-retryable errors (misconfiguration)
• Unauthenticated access support: Properly supports unauthenticated access to public S3 buckets without requiring credentials
• Improved error messages: Provides detailed logging with attempt numbers, retry intervals, and error context for better troubleshooting

The improvements ensure more reliable AWS service integration, particularly in environments with intermittent network connectivity or during AWS service degradations.

Observability & Tracing​

DataFusion Log Emission: The Spice runtime now emits DataFusion internal logs, providing deeper visibility into query planning and execution for debugging and performance analysis.

AI Completions Tracing: Fixed tracing so that ai_completions operations are correctly parented under sql_query traces, improving observability for AI-powered queries.

Git Data Connector (Alpha)​

Version-Controlled Data Access: The new Git Data Connector (Alpha) enables querying datasets stored in Git repositories. This connector is ideal for use cases involving configuration files, documentation, or any data tracked in version control.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: git:https://github.com/myorg/myrepo
    name: git_metrics
    params:
      file_format: csv

For more details, refer to the Git Data Connector Documentation.

Spice Java SDK 0.4.0​

The Spice Java SDK has been upgraded with support for configurable Arrow memory limit: spice-java v0.4.0

SpiceClient client = SpiceClient.builder()
    .withArrowMemoryLimitMB(1024) // 1GB limit
    .build();

For more details, refer to the Java SDK Documentation.

CLI Improvements​

Install Specific Versions: The spice install command now supports installing specific versions of the Spice runtime and CLI. This enables easy version management, downgrading, or installation of specific releases for testing or compatibility requirements.

Usage:

# Install a specific version
spice install v1.8.3

# Install a specific version with AI flavor
spice install v1.8.3 ai

# Install latest version (existing behavior)
spice install
spice install ai

Note: Homebrew installations require manual version management via brew install spiceai/spiceai/spice@<version>.

Persistent Query History: The Spice CLI REPL (SQL, search, and chat interfaces) now persists command history to ~/.spice/query_history.txt, making your query history available across sessions. The history file is automatically created if it doesn't exist, with graceful fallback if the home directory cannot be determined.

New REPL Commands:

• .clear - Clear the screen using ANSI escape codes for a clean workspace
• .clear history - Clear and persist the query history, removing all stored commands

Tab Completion: Tab completion now includes suggestions based on your command history, making it faster to re-run or modify previous queries.

Example usage:

sql> SELECT * FROM my_table;
sql> .clear          # Clears the screen
sql> .clear history  # Clears command history
sql> # Use arrow keys or tab to access previous commands

For more details, refer to the CLI Documentation.

Additional Improvements & Bug Fixes​

• Reliability: Fixed refresh worker panics with recovery handling to prevent runtime crashes during acceleration refreshes.
• Reliability: Improved error messages for missing or invalid spicepod.yaml files, providing actionable feedback for misconfiguration.
• Reliability: Fixed DuckDB metadata pointer loading issues for snapshots.
• Performance: Ensured ListingTable partitions are pruned correctly when filters are not used.
• Reliability: Fixed vector dimension determination for partitioned indexes.
• Search: Fixed casing issues in Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) for hybrid search queries.
• Search: Fixed search field handling as metadata for chunked search indexes.
• Validation: Added timestamp support for partition expressions.
• Validation: Fixed regexp_match function for DuckDB datasets.
• Validation: Fixed partition name validation for improved reliability.

Contributors​

• @Jeadie
• @lukekim
• @peasee
• @phillipleblanc
• @sgrebnov
• @kczimm
• @krinart
• @mach-kernel

Breaking Changes​

No breaking changes.

Cookbook Updates​

New HTTP Data Connector Recipe: New recipe demonstrating how to query REST APIs and HTTP(s) endpoints. See HTTP Connector Recipe for details.

The Spice Cookbook includes 82 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.

Upgrading​

To upgrade to v1.9.0, use one of the following methods:

CLI:

spice upgrade

Homebrew:

brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice

Docker:

Pull the spiceai/spiceai:1.9.0 image:

docker pull spiceai/spiceai:1.9.0

For available tags, see DockerHub.

Helm:

helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai

AWS Marketplace:

🎉 Spice is now available in the AWS Marketplace!

What's Changed​

Dependencies​

• DataFusion: Upgraded to v50
• Apache Arrow: Upgraded to v56
• DuckDB: Upgraded to v1.4.2
• Delta Kernel: Upgraded to v0.16.0

Changelog​

• Fix for search field as metadata for chunked search indexes by @Jeadie in #7429
• Bump object_store from 0.12.3 to 0.12.4 by @app/dependabot in #7433
• Properly respect disabling snapshots by @phillipleblanc in #7431
• Revert "Properly respect disabling snapshots" by @sgrebnov in #7439
• Revert "Disable snapshots by default" by @sgrebnov in #7438
• Add preview warning for write access mode by @sgrebnov in #7440
• fix: regexp_match for DuckDB datasets by @kczimm in #7443
• Add feature is currently in preview warning for snapshots by @sgrebnov in #7442
• [Logger] Also emit Datafusion logs by @mach-kernel in #7441
• add missing snapshot by @kczimm in #7446
• Fix tracing so that ai_completions are parented under sql_query by @lukekim in #7415
• Enable snapshot acceleration by default by @phillipleblanc in #7451
• Disable acceleration refresh metrics by @krinart in #7450
• Add v1.8 release notes by @phillipleblanc in #7430
• fix: partition name validation by @kczimm in #7452
• Fix lint error due to ignore without reasons by @krinart in #7454
• Add models and CUDA support to spiced install script by @lukekim in #7457
• Post-release 1.8 updates by @phillipleblanc in #7455
• Remove println in datafusion by @phillipleblanc in #7461
• Update end_game.md to notify once release is done by @sgrebnov in #7460
• Remove italics from snapshot logging by @phillipleblanc in #7463
• Update openapi.json by @app/github-actions in #7466
• Fix generate spicepod schema by @phillipleblanc in #7464
• Fix generate acknowledements by @phillipleblanc in #7465
• Update spicepod.schema.json by @app/github-actions in #7469
• fix: Ensure ListingTable partitions are pruned when filters are not used by @peasee in #7471
• Create runtime-secrets crate by @phillipleblanc in #7474
• Create runtime-parameters crate by @phillipleblanc in #7475
• Don't download the snapshot if the acceleration is present by @phillipleblanc in #7477
• Bump hyper-util from 0.1.16 to 0.1.17 by @app/dependabot in #7434
• Add missing remote CLI feature by @lukekim in #7478
• Add 1.8.0 release analytics by @sgrebnov in #7481
• CLI multi-line input support for spice sql by @lukekim in #7479
• fix: duckdb partitioning cannot reload config by @kczimm in #7482
• fix: Make search cache test use a slower uncached search by @peasee in #7473
• Add support for S3 dataset params by @phillipleblanc in #7476
• Add DuckDB TPC-H memory limit variations by @lukekim in #7484
• Add better snapshot validation for incorrectly configured spicepods by @phillipleblanc in #7487
• Move blocking/sync I/O to spawn blocking by @lukekim in #7462
• Add DuckDB file accelerator 2G and 4G dispatches by @lukekim in #7491
• Validate spicepod file exists before running tests by @lukekim in #7492
• Make snapshot reading/writing more robust with Iceberg-like metadata.json by @phillipleblanc in #7486
• Re-use build-testoperator and ensure it's cached by @lukekim in #7494
• Fix duckdb test operator limit casing by @lukekim in #7498
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7499
• Create runtime-request-context crate by @Jeadie in #7459
• Add integration tests for Acceleration DB snapshotting by @phillipleblanc in #7489
• Two minor fixes for AI udf tests by @krinart in #7503
• Add model response timeout for ai udf tests by @krinart in #7504
• Show error if FTS is misconfigured for datasets/views by @krinart in #7458
• Add test for chunked search index with search field as metadata by @Jeadie in #7513
• Add sccache for build test operator by @lukekim in #7515
• Enhancement: Add spill_compression to runtime config by @krinart in #7505
• Improve GitHub Data Connector by @lukekim in #7510
• Add RequestTimeoutException to S3 client by @Jeadie in #7514
• Add sha=<> to snapshot logging by @phillipleblanc in #7521
• Add Type to GitHub Data Connector issues and fix double aliasing for project author by @lukekim in #7519
• DuckDB acceleration: fix memory leak in duckdb_arrow_scan by @sgrebnov in #7524
• Fix partition_by accelerations when a projection is applied on empty partition sets by @phillipleblanc in #7526
• Nullable fields for index columns by @Jeadie in #7523
• Fix missing winver dependency for Windows by @krinart in #7538
• Update mongo config for benchmarks by @krinart in #7546
• Add acceleration snapshots cookbook to template by @phillipleblanc in #7527
• Bump github/codeql-action from 3 to 4 by @app/dependabot in #7535
• Bump golang.org/x/sys from 0.36.0 to 0.37.0 by @app/dependabot in #7529
• Make spice chat play nice with Unix pipes by @Jeadie in #7525
• Configurable DuckDB duckdb_index_scan_percentage & duckdb_index_scan_max_count by @lukekim in #7551
• [cherry-pick] Release notes for release 1.8.1 by @krinart in #7556
• Fix 1.8.1 release notes by @krinart in #7558
• FTS index with nonfilterable metadata; search field not metadata by default. by @Jeadie in #7548
• Properly set auth headers in github_release.py by @krinart in #7560
• project_schema when using EmptyExec by @kczimm in #7543
• Add 1.8.1 release analytics by @kczimm in #7561
• Bump golang.org/x/mod from 0.28.0 to 0.29.0 by @app/dependabot in #7530
• Hive-style partitioning for DuckDB file mode by @kczimm in #7563
• Vortex Data Accelerator (Dev grade) by @lukekim in #7566
• Only load eval scorers when eval defined by @Jeadie in #7549
• Bump octocrab from 0.45.0 to 0.47.0 by @app/dependabot in #7531
• Bump regex from 1.11.3 to 1.12.1 by @app/dependabot in #7532
• Fix custom file path for Vortex Data Accelerator by @phillipleblanc in #7570
• Add List type support to Vortex Data Accelerator by @lukekim in #7569
• Bump parking_lot from 0.12.4 to 0.12.5 by @app/dependabot in #7534
• Bump tokio-postgres from 0.7.14 to 0.7.15 by @app/dependabot in #7533
• Remove duplicate line from 1.8.1 release notes by @krinart in #7580
• Upgrade Go from v1.24.2 to v1.25.3 by @lukekim in #7582
• Fix race condition in S3 Vectors index and bucket creation by @kczimm in #7577
• Add runtime-async crate with managed Tokio runtime by @phillipleblanc in #7575
• Optimize GitHub Actions workflows by @lukekim in #7584
• Use 'location' as primary key for document tables by @Jeadie in #7567
• Extend query-related metrics by @krinart in #7571
• Enabling acceleration refresh metrics by using runtime.metrics config by @krinart in #7583
• S3Vector service metrics in client by @Jeadie in #7502
• Fix score order for one test case by @Jeadie in #7595
• ObjectMeta filter pushdown for ObjectStoreTextTable by @Jeadie in #7572
• Return TableProvider from CandidateGeneration::search. by @Jeadie in #7559
• EmptyHashJoinExecPhysicalOptimization, and use in VectorScanTableProvider by @Jeadie in #7587
• Update official Docker builds to use release binaries by @phillipleblanc in #7597
• New Generate Changelog workflow by @krinart in #7562
• BytesProcessedExec to allow optimizer to do limit pushdown by @mach-kernel in #7539
• GitHub Data Connector add Projects, improve rate-limiting and error handling by @lukekim in #7547
• Add copilot-instructions to help improve Copilot reviews by @lukekim in #7606
• Add support for DuckDB table-based partitioning by @sgrebnov in #7581
• fix: Use nextest for integration models tests by @peasee in #7617
• Fix license issue in table-providers by @phillipleblanc in #7620
• Remove Build Docker Image from PR checks by @phillipleblanc in #7621
• Combine PR Lint + Build checks by @phillipleblanc in #7623
• Remove Cache Rust builds step by @phillipleblanc in #7625
• Rename duckdb_partition_mode to partition_mode param by @sgrebnov in #7622
• DuckDB table partitioning: delete partitions that no longer exist after full refresh by @sgrebnov in #7614
• Build integration test binaries in single job by @phillipleblanc in #7624
• Make DuckDB table partition data write threshold configurable by @sgrebnov in #7626
• Handle table relations in HTTP v1/search by @Jeadie in #7615
• Fix E2E Test sporadic failures on the macOS runners by @phillipleblanc in #7627
• Emit query_active_count metric by @krinart in #7589
• fix: Disable go cache in actions by @peasee in #7631
• fix: Don't nullify DuckDB release callbacks for schemas by @peasee in #7628
• Fix integration tests by reverting the use of batch inserts w/ prepared statements by @phillipleblanc in #7630
• Split integration tests into 3 partitions by @phillipleblanc in #7635
• Initial Pepper data accelerator by @lukekim in #7592
• Only build the E2E Test CI binaries once by @phillipleblanc in #7633
• Update BytesProcessedExec snapshots by @mach-kernel in #7637
• Properly set RequestContext for stream execution in Flight by @krinart in #7591
• Add task for creating release branch in docs by @kczimm in #7642
• Add missing mongodb params by @krinart in #7647
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7649
• Release notes for v1.8.2 by @Jeadie in #7645
• docs: Update error handling in copilot instructions by @peasee in #7652
• Pepper accelerator INSERT OVERWRITE support by @lukekim in #7643
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7650
• Run Datafusion queries on a separate Tokio runtime by @phillipleblanc in #7586
• Add explicit steps for docs DRI in end game by @kczimm in #7658
• Add Release 1.8.2 QA Analytics by @krinart in #7661
• Pepper full / append refresh support by @lukekim in #7662
• Add 'client_timeout' for s3 vector by @Jeadie in #7501
• Improvements to Endgame template by @krinart in #7660
• Fix OSS docker release trigger when release marked as latest by @phillipleblanc in #7668
• Use '#[serde(deny_unknown_fields)]' for base spicepod components by @Jeadie in #7669
• DataFusion upgrade template to include Ballista by @mach-kernel in #7679
• S3 Vector index spilling by @kczimm in #7613
• Refresh request context bindings / fix trunk integration tests by @mach-kernel in #7680
• Fix integration tests for refresh append by @lukekim in #7681
• Distributed query support by @mach-kernel in #7585
• Run acceleration refreshes on separate Tokio runtime by @phillipleblanc in #7671
• Support DESCRIBE in clustered mode by @kczimm in #7686
• use hyphen instead of period for index name spill separator by @kczimm in #7697
• Add streaming option to /nsql endpoint by @kczimm in #7695
• Task History min_sql_duration filter support by @lukekim in #7698
• Spawn object_store IO tasks on the original Tokio runtime by @phillipleblanc in #7689
• Update openapi.json by @app/github-actions in #7700
• Adjust DataFusion runtime worker threads by @phillipleblanc in #7704
• Gate dedicated SQL engine CPU runtime behind opt-in param dedicated_thread_pool by @phillipleblanc in #7705
• Add TPCH S3 refresh spicepod by @phillipleblanc in #7706
• DuckDB: include ANALYZE after write to update query optimizer statistics by @sgrebnov in #7714
• Display execution time in Spice REPL for no results by @sgrebnov in #7713
• Task History capture and store SQL query plans by @lukekim in #7701
• Pepper TPC-H SF-1 benchmark by @lukekim in #7717
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7720
• Optimize prepared statements (parameterized queries) by @lukekim in #7703
• Pepper accelerator tests (Clickbench, TPC-H SF-5, SF-100) by @lukekim in #7721
• Add support for DuckDB connection_pool_size param by @sgrebnov in #7716
• Add health probing to testoperator runs by @phillipleblanc in #7709
• Simplify AcceleratedTable by @Jeadie in #7724
• Add some basic indexing tests for 'FullTextDatabaseIndex' by @Jeadie in #7688
• DuckDB: on_refresh_recompute_statistics param + ANALYZE for table-based partitioning by @sgrebnov in #7719
• Fix Windows builds by excluding pepper/vortex by @phillipleblanc in #7729
• Enable separate CPU runtime thread pool for DataFusion by default by @phillipleblanc in #7732
• 'runtime-datafusion' crate for runtime related DataFusion components by @Jeadie in #7666
• Pepper expanded append refresh support by @lukekim in #7670
• Pepper basic partitioning by @lukekim in #7731
• Stable pepper benchmark snapshots by @phillipleblanc in #7739
• Delta Lake Connector: Support AWS_SESSION_TOKEN parameter by @mach-kernel in #7752
• Pepper use SQLite WAL by @lukekim in #7757
• v1.8.3 release notes by @mach-kernel in #7745
• Increase testoperator health check threshold to 50ms by @phillipleblanc in #7767
• Data Accelerator Graceful Shutdown by @lukekim in #7756
• Remove Windows CUDA builds by @phillipleblanc in #7768
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7771
• Bump actions/download-artifact from 5 to 6 by @app/dependabot in #7746
• Bump serde from 1.0.226 to 1.0.228 by @app/dependabot in #7743
• Fix casing for keywords and additional columns by @Jeadie in #7770
• Bump actions/upload-artifact from 4 to 5 by @app/dependabot in #7750
• Bump criterion from 0.5.1 to 0.7.0 by @app/dependabot in #7740
• Bump rustls-native-certs from 0.8.1 to 0.8.2 by @app/dependabot in #7744
• Git Data Connector (Alpha) by @lukekim in #7772
• Pepper accelerator delete support by @lukekim in #7616
• Update Helm chart instructions for Helm in end_game.md by @sgrebnov in #7776
• Turso data accelerator by @lukekim in #7472
• Apply retention SQL filter to refresh fetch by @phillipleblanc in #7778
• Add Parquet buffering option for DuckDB partitioned writes (tables mode) by @sgrebnov in #7735
• fix: EmptyExec when list indexes is empty by @kczimm in #7784
• 1.8.3 post-release housekeeping by @mach-kernel in #7783
• feat: Upgrade to Datafusion v50 by @peasee in #7777
• fix: Replace vortex datafusion with public crate by @peasee in #7791
• Full-text search on views by @Jeadie in #7733
• Revert "Apply retention SQL filter to refresh fetch (#7778)" by @phillipleblanc in #7796
• fix: Add ingest duration and acceleration size metrics to testoperator by @peasee in #7792
• Set local timezone to UTC for DuckDB by @phillipleblanc in #7797
• add Timestamp support for partition expressions by @kczimm in #7803
• Fix trunk lint by @krinart in #7804
• Add missing mongodb params by @krinart in #7807
• Embedding columns on view components by @Jeadie in #7795
• Add Turso as a Pepper Catalog metastore by @lukekim in #7793
• Run retention_sql on refresh commit for DuckDB by @lukekim in #7785
• docs: Update datafusion upgrade checklist by @peasee in #7812
• Vector engines on views by @Jeadie in #7808
• Handle refresh worker panics and add recovery test by @phillipleblanc in #7815
• chunk large record batches to control memory usage by @kczimm in #7802
• fix: cannot determine vector dimension for partitioned indexes by @kczimm in #7818
• Upgrade to Turso v0.3 by @lukekim in #7821
• fix: Ensure custom *Exec ExecutionPlans push down dynamic filters by @peasee in #7811
• handle casing in RRF by @Jeadie in #7825
• Enable 'turso' for pepper acceleration by default by @sgrebnov in #7826
• Improved DynamoDB Data Connector by @krinart in #7715
• Initial support for llama.cpp as LLM inference backend by @lukekim in #7794
• Pepper: Implement retention SQL on refresh commit by @phillipleblanc in #7814
• Fix Dockerfiles for arm64 by @lukekim in #7834
• [DynamoDB] Handle filter edge-cases by @krinart in #7830
• [DynamoDB] Support parallelization for Scan request by @krinart in #7829
• Don't feature gate Pepper by @lukekim in #7832
• Fix llama.cpp static link by @lukekim in #7835
• fix: docker nightly builds by @kczimm in #7837
• Use GitHub-hosted macOS runner only for tag releases by @lukekim in #7836
• Fix Bug: DuckDB INTERNAL Error: Failed to load metadata pointer by @sgrebnov in #7839
• Fix docker arm64 build to use aegis in pure-rust mode by @lukekim in #7840
• Revert "Use GitHub-hosted macOS runner only for tag releases" by @lukekim in #7843
• Rename Pepper to Cayenne by @lukekim in #7844
• Tighten CLI permissions and install script by @lukekim in #7845
• Set mvcc for Cayenne Turso metastore by @lukekim in #7850
• Optimize Prepared Statements by @lukekim in #7859
• Remove unwrap from ODBC connector, fix secrets, and kuberenetes secre… by @lukekim in #7846
• Improve and secure HTTP client usage by @lukekim in #7847
• Pin Oracle Instant Client download to a SHA by @lukekim in #7851
• Improve experience for missing or invalid Spicepod.yaml by @lukekim in #7849
• chore: Fix PR linting by @peasee in #7865
• Revert FlightIPC issues by @Jeadie in #7870
• Bump Jimver/cuda-toolkit from 0.2.28 to 0.2.29 by @app/dependabot in #7878
• Optimize macOS and Windows builds by @lukekim in #7863
• Improve error message by adding 'cayenne' to the list of valid accelerator engines by @sgrebnov in #7882
• fix: Kafka message delivery failed by @kczimm in #7883
• fix: allow parameter index without dollar signs by @kczimm in #7887
• docs: Update component criteria by @peasee in #7891
• Temporary disable supports_limit_pushdown for SchemaCastScanExec by @sgrebnov in #7893
• fix: Make integration run with no relevant changes, disable makefile targets on PR by @peasee in #7896
• Add Cayenne benchmark and concurrency tests and remove indexes for Turso MVCC by @lukekim in #7879
• Remove '.embeddings[].metadata' by @Jeadie in #7897
• Revert llama.cpp engine by @lukekim in #7898
• Make Cayenne snapshotting more robust by @sgrebnov in #7899
• Release notes v1.9.0-rc1 by @Jeadie in #7902
• Fix dataset_acceleration_last_refresh_time_ms unit to milliseconds in description by @ewgenius in #7901
• Fix lint error in record_explain_plan functionality by @sgrebnov in #7906
• Cleanup old snapshots after full refresh by @lukekim in #7908
• Cayenne deletion vector caching support by @lukekim in #7903
• Split filters into partition filters (for pruning) and data filters by @lukekim in #7889
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7911
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7912
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7913
• Update spicepod.schema.json by @app/github-actions in #7916
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7917
• Add Cayenne & Turso accelerators to E2E CI test matrix by @lukekim in #7922
• Make preview warnings consistent by @lukekim in #7921
• Filter and write optimizations by @lukekim in #7918
• fix: Set sccache region explicitly by @peasee in #7928
• fix: Enable integration test merge group checks by @peasee in #7927
• Update testoperator release branch from 1.8 to 1.9 by @peasee in #7926
• Update DuckDB to 1.4.1 with composite ART scans by @mach-kernel in #7884
• Don't build Windows on trunk pushes by @lukekim in #7931
• fix: Use correct minio secret in build binary push by @peasee in #7934
• Update test-framework workers to use dedicated Flight client by @sgrebnov in #7938
• Fix financebench, configure s3vectors for appropriate snapshotting by @Jeadie in #7935
• Don't try to initialize accelerator if it is disabled by @lukekim in #7932
• Add spark UDFs to Spice by @Jeadie in #7936
• Fix extra async_trait in cayenne metadata catalog by @phillipleblanc in #7942
• deps: Upgrade to Rust 1.90 by @peasee in #7941
• Add cayenne accelerator to README.md by @ewgenius in #7905
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7948
• Run integration tests with AWS_EC2_METADATA_DISABLED flag by @sgrebnov in #7952
• Only retry credentials on ConnectorError by @kczimm in #7944
• fix: Improve join reordering by ensuring JoinSelection is applied by @peasee in #7828
• fix: Remove unused deps, consolidate workspace deps by @peasee in #7953
• bump async-openai commit by @kczimm in #7929
• deps: Use vortex fork by @peasee in #7954
• Enable tracing in delta lake integration tests by @sgrebnov in #7951
• Update datasets in S3 vectors test case by @Jeadie in #7956
• Add spiced metrics scraping to test operator by @lukekim in #7937
• Memoize S3 vectors ListIndex API call with configurable TTL by @kczimm in #7910
• Cayenne performance optimizations by @lukekim in #7907
• Setup HotFix issue template by @ewgenius in #7957
• Fix AWS SDK credential cache retry handling by @phillipleblanc in #7943
• Infer RRF join_key from TableProvider::constraints and implement SearchQueryProvider::constraints. by @Jeadie in #7959
• [Optimizer]: DuckDB intermediate materialization (non-federated) by @mach-kernel in #7964
• 1.7.3 post-release housekeeping by @ewgenius in #7962
• Fix digest_many UDF for ColumnarValue::Array. by @Jeadie in #7960
• Fix spiced metrics reporting as part of benchmark tests by @sgrebnov in #7967
• Avoid pushing down Spice specific UDFs to accelerators during federation by @Jeadie in #7909
• CLI file persisted history with .clear and .clear history commands by @lukekim in #7970
• ResultsCache Cache-Control stale-while-revalidate by @lukekim in #7963
• Use GetVectors API instead of returnData by @kczimm in #7083
• Make DuckDB intermediate materialization logic more robust by @sgrebnov in #7971
• [Cayenne] Configurable target Vortex file size by @lukekim in #7972
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7974
• Bump github.com/klauspost/compress from 1.17.11 to 1.18.1 by @app/dependabot in #7872
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7978
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #7982
• Run Integration tests on spiceai-dev-runners by @sgrebnov in #7985
• [CLI] Fix cursor issue due to flush by @lukekim in #7981
• fix: Support S3 versioning, Vortex dynamic filter pushdown by @peasee in #7984
• Make cluster a default feature by @lukekim in #7994
• Optimize DuckDB Intermediate Index Materialization for No-Index Case by @sgrebnov in #7998
• HTTP connector with dynamic filter support by @lukekim in #7969
• Revert federation 'can_execute_plan' by @Jeadie in #7999
• Fix stale caching by @lukekim in #7995
• Fix count(*) for http connector by @krinart in #8001
• [CLI] Install specific version by @lukekim in #8006
• Fix stale with revalidate request/response by @lukekim in #8005
• Fallback RequestContext for cluster queries by @Jeadie in #8007
• Use use_rustls_tls for Spice Cloud /connect by @lukekim in #8008
• Use delta-kernel-rs 0.16x + Parquet reader with object meta API changes by @mach-kernel in #8011
• fix: Update datafusion & arrow-rs with S3 versioning fix by @lukekim in #8012
• Add 1.9.0-rc.2 release notes by @sgrebnov in #7993
• Update Datafusion version by @sgrebnov in #8014
• [Acceleration] DuckDB tables mode partitioner + CTE rewrite optimizer by @mach-kernel in #8013
• Update spicepod.schema.json by @app/github-actions in #8015
• Update acknowledgements by @app/github-actions in #8016
• Upgrade shutdown signal Ordering by @krinart in #8017
• Set max-age: 0 during stale by @lukekim in #8018
• Add E2E test release for Helm by @lukekim in #8023
• Bump github.com/olekukonko/tablewriter from 0.0.5 to 1.1.1 by @app/dependabot in #7989
• Bump schemars from 0.9.0 to 1.0.4 by @app/dependabot in #7877
• Update generate_changelog script by @krinart in #8028
• Update QA analytics Release 1.9.0-rc.2 by @krinart in #8027
• [CLI] Improve auto-complete by @lukekim in #8022
• Improve verify helm workflow by @lukekim in #8024
• Bump azure_core from 0.28.0 to 0.30.0 by @app/dependabot in #7986
• Test operator load test row count validation by @lukekim in #8036
• fix: Revert HTTP response offloading by @peasee in #8041
• Disable advanced filters pruning for partitioned tables by @sgrebnov in #8037
• fix: Ensure Vortex UncompressedSizeInBytes is calculated by @peasee in #8044
• Add 1.9.0-rc.3 release notes by @sgrebnov in #8048
• fix: Update test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8046
• add benchmark spicepods by @Jeadie in #8047
• DynamoDB TPC-H SF1 Benchmarks by @krinart in #8043
• Bump github.com/AzureAD/microsoft-authentication-library-for-go from 1.5.0 to 1.6.0 by @app/dependabot in #7988
• Bump golang.org/x/sys from 0.37.0 to 0.38.0 by @app/dependabot in #7987
• v1.9.0-rc.2 README updates by @lukekim in #8035
• Bump suppaftp from 5.4.0 to 6.3.0 by @app/dependabot in #7875
• Bump ctor from 0.5.0 to 0.6.0 by @app/dependabot in #7873
• WW README Update by @wyattwenzel in #8058
• Reenable dynamic federation support by @Jeadie in #8026
• fix: Prevent SortExec from ordering below SchemaCastScanExec by @peasee in #8061
• Skip logging and return OK() on error during shutdown by @krinart in #8057
• Partition pruning with complex expressions by @lukekim in #8040
• Update openapi.json by @app/github-actions in #8064
• Make DynamoDB snapshots consistent by @krinart in #8069
• Add check for error log by @krinart in #8070
• Fix tracing of 's3_vector_query_and_get' by @Jeadie in #8065
• DuckDB v1.4.2 by @mach-kernel in #8073
• Fix failing OpenAI test by @krinart in #8076
• Enable 'test_recency_scoring' by @Jeadie in #8068
• Test operator: avoid duplicate Flight requests when using --http-clients by @sgrebnov in #8071
• Update load tests to use truth percentile values by @sgrebnov in #8079
• Update DynamoDB to RC by @krinart in #8060
• CachedQueryVector to avoid recomputing embedding vector for spilling/partitioned vector indexes. by @Jeadie in #8059
• Fix DuckDB on_commit sink race by @lukekim in #8081
• Add partitioned duckdb by @lukekim in #8083
• [CLI] Security and santization by @lukekim in #8082
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8084
• Fix partition_by expression by @lukekim in #8087
• Data Components security fixes and sanitization by @lukekim in #8086
• Runtime security and sanitization by @lukekim in #8088
• Add spicepod-validator tool and fix spicepods by @lukekim in #8089
• Skip data fetches for S3 single file refreshes by @lukekim in #8072
• MCP security and sanitization by @lukekim in #8090
• Update spicepod.schema.json by @app/github-actions in #8099
• Update acknowledgements by @app/github-actions in #8098
• Add install-dev target back to Makefile by @Jeadie in #8100
• fix 'testoperator run search' by @Jeadie in #8101
• Update datafusion-table-providers - fix nullability inferences for MySQL and PostgreSQL, and fix full text search for PostgreSQL by @ewgenius in #8092
• Remove duplicate install-with-models by @phillipleblanc in #8107
• Improve Cayenne partitioning by @lukekim in #8097
• Testoperator dispatch: respect verify_results dispatch configuration by @sgrebnov in #8106
• Include 'match' column only if chunk offsets found in seach query 'LogicalPlan' by @Jeadie in #8102
• Fix validation path by @lukekim in #8109
• Fix dispatch paths by @lukekim in #8110
• Fix dispatch spicepod paths by @lukekim in #8112
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8113
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8114
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8116
• Update test Spicepods by @lukekim in #8131
• Add validation to reference schema by @lukekim in #8111
• Include root error when failing to find latest timestamp in accelerated table by @sgrebnov in #8132
• fix: HTTP Connector validation, query and body by @lukekim in #8115
• Update nsql model list by @lukekim in #8141
• Update DynamoDB Benchmarks by @krinart in #8135
• Fix Dremio E2E test by @sgrebnov in #8139
• fix: Update MongoDB benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8143
• fix: Update DynamoDB benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8142
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8145
• fix: Update iceberg[catalog] benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8144
• Improve HTTP Connector UX by @lukekim in #8146
• QueryOverrides for DynamoDB benchmarks by @krinart in #8151
• test-framework: add row count validation skipping with TPC-DS defaults by @sgrebnov in #8149
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8148
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8154
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8155
• fix: Update test snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8160
• Suppress delta_kernel::listed_log_files warnings by @phillipleblanc in #8158
• Update table providers to fix warning by @phillipleblanc in #8156
• Suppress MCP limit log by @phillipleblanc in #8159
• Remove incorrect tool name validation by @Jeadie in #8161
• Disable results validation for federated/glue[csv].yaml by @phillipleblanc in #8163
• fix: Update benchmark snapshots by @app/github-actions in #8164
• Fix dynamodb overrides by @phillipleblanc in #8165
• Fix dynamo db overrides again by @phillipleblanc in #8166
• few more dynamodb overrides by @phillipleblanc in #8167
• Add stub release notes for v1.9.0-rc.4 by @phillipleblanc in #8168
• Add v1.9.0-rc.4 release notes by @lukekim in #8169
• fix: Cayenne concurrent table creation by @lukekim in #8176
• fix: Avoid pruning bucket partitions for != and NOT IN operators by @sgrebnov in #8177

Announcing the release of Spice v1.9.0-rc.4! 🌶

This release candidate brings DuckDB v1.4.2, Cayenne partitioning improvements, and comprehensive security hardening across the CLI, data connectors, runtime, and MCP. v1.9.0-rc.4 also includes MySQL and PostgreSQL connector improvements with fixed nullability inferences and full-text search support, DynamoDB consistency improvements, HTTP connector validation and UX enhancements, and numerous reliability and performance optimizations. Significant improvements were also made to test and automation infrastructure to ensure high quality releases.

v1.9.0 introduces Spice Cayenne, a new high-performance data accelerator built on the Vortex columnar format that delivers better than DuckDB performance without single-file scaling limitations, and a preview of Multi-Node Distributed Query based on Apache Ballista. v1.9.0 also upgrades to DataFusion v50 for even higher query performance, expands search capabilities with full-text search on views and multi-column embeddings, and delivers many additional features and improvements.

What's New in v1.9.0​

Cayenne Data Accelerator (Beta)​

Introducing Cayenne: SQL as an Acceleration Format: A new high-performance Data Accelerator that simplifies multi-file data acceleration by using an embedded database (SQLite) for metadata while storing data in the Vortex columnar format, a Linux Foundation project. Cayenne delivers query and ingestion performance better than DuckDB's file-based acceleration without DuckDB's memory overhead and the scaling challenges of single DuckDB files.

Cayenne uses SQLite to manage acceleration metadata (schemas, snapshots, statistics, file tracking) through simple SQL transactions, while storing data in Vortex's compressed columnar format. This architecture provides:

Key Features:

• SQLite + Vortex Architecture: All metadata is stored in SQLite tables with standard SQL transactions, while data lives in Vortex's compressed, chunked columnar format designed for zero-copy access and efficient scanning.
• Simplified Operations: No complex file hierarchies, no JSON/Avro metadata files, no separate catalog servers—just SQL tables and Vortex data files. The entire metadata schema is intentionally simple for maximum reliability.
• Fast Metadata Access: Single SQL query retrieves all metadata needed for query planning—no multiple round trips to storage, no S3 throttling, no reconstruction of metadata state from scattered files.
• Efficient Small Changes: Dramatically reduces small file proliferation. Snapshots are just rows in SQLite tables, not new files on disk. Supports millions of snapshots without performance degradation.
• High Concurrency: Changes consist of two steps: stage Vortex files (if any), then run a single SQL transaction. Much faster conflict resolution and support for many more concurrent updates than file-based formats.
• Advanced Data Lifecycle: Full ACID transactions, delete support, and retention SQL execution on refresh commit.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: s3:my_table
    name: accelerated_data_30d
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: cayenne
      mode: file
      refresh_mode: append
      retention_sql: DELETE FROM accelerated_data WHERE created_at < NOW() - INTERVAL '30 days'

Note, the Cayenne Data Accelerator is in Beta with limitations.

For more details, refer to the Cayenne Documentation, the Vortex project, and the DuckLake announcement that partly inspired this design.

Multi-Node Distributed Query (Preview)​

Apache Ballista Integration: Spice now supports distributed query execution based on Apache Ballista, enabling distributed queries across multiple executor nodes for improved performance on large datasets. This feature is in preview in v1.9.0-rc.3.

Architecture:

A distributed Spice cluster consists of:

• Scheduler: Responsible for distributed query planning and work queue management for the executor fleet
• Executors: One or more nodes responsible for running physical query plans

Getting Started:

Start a scheduler instance using an existing Spicepod. The scheduler is the only spiced instance that needs to be configured:

# Start scheduler (note the flight bind address override if you want it reachable outside localhost)
spiced --cluster-mode scheduler --flight 0.0.0.0:50051

Start one or more executors configured with the scheduler's flight URI:

# Start executor (automatically selects a free port if 50051 is taken)
spiced --cluster-mode executor --scheduler-url spiced://localhost:50051

Query Execution:

Queries run through the scheduler will now show a distributed_plan in EXPLAIN output, demonstrating how the query is distributed across executor nodes:

EXPLAIN SELECT count(id) FROM my_dataset;

Current Limitations:

• Accelerated datasets are currently not supported. This feature is designed for querying partitioned data lake formats (Parquet, Delta Lake, Iceberg, etc.)
• The feature is in preview and may have stability or performance limitations
• Specific acceleration support is planned for future releases

DataFusion v50 Upgrade​

Spice.ai is built on the Apache DataFusion query engine. The v50 release brings significant performance improvements and enhanced reliability:

Performance Improvements 🚀:

• Dynamic Filter Pushdown: Enhanced dynamic filter pushdown for custom ExecutionPlans, ensuring filters propagate correctly through all physical operators for improved query performance.

• Partition Pruning: Expanded partition pruning support ensures that unnecessary partitions are skipped when filters are not used, reducing data scanning overhead and improving query execution times.

Apache Spark Compatible Functions: Added support for Spark-compatible functions including array, bit_get/bit_count, bitmap_count, crc32/sha1, date_add/date_sub, if, last_day, like/ilike, luhn_check, mod/pmod, next_day, parse_url, rint, and width_bucket.

Bug Fixes & Reliability: Resolved issues with partition name validation and empty execution plans when vector index lists are empty. Fixed timestamp support for partition expressions, enabling better partitioning for time-series data.

See the Apache DataFusion 50.0.3 Release for more details.

DuckDB v1.4.2 Upgrade and Accelerator Improvements​

DuckDB v1.4.2: DuckDB has been upgraded to v1.4.2, which includes several performance optimizations.

Composite ART Index Support: DuckDB in Spice now supports composite (multi-column) Adaptive Radix Tree (ART) indexes for accelerated table scans. When queries filter on multiple columns fully covered by a composite index, the optimizer automatically uses index scans instead of full table scans, delivering significant performance improvements for selective queries.

Example configuration:

datasets:
  - from: file://data.parquet
    name: sales
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      indexes:
        '(region, product_id)': enabled

Performance example with composite index on 7.5M rows:

SELECT * FROM sales WHERE region = 'US' AND product_id = 12345;

-- Without index: 0.282s
-- With composite index (region, product_id): 0.037s
-- Performance improvement: 7.6x faster with composite index

DuckDB Intermediate Materialization: Queries with indexes now use intermediate materialization (WITH ... AS MATERIALIZED) to leverage faster index scans. Currently supported for non-federated queries (query_federation: disabled) against a single table with indexes only. When predicates cover more columns than the index, the optimizer rewrites queries to first materialize index-filtered results, then apply remaining predicates. This optimization can deliver significant performance improvements for selective queries.

Example configuration:

datasets:
  - from: file://sales_data.parquet
    name: sales
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      mode: file
      params:
        query_federation: disabled # Required currently for intermediate materialization
      indexes:
        '(region, product_id)': enabled

Performance example:

-- Query with indexed columns (region, product_id) plus additional filter (amount)
SELECT * FROM sales
WHERE region = 'US' AND product_id = 12345 AND amount > 1000;

-- Optimized execution time: 0.031s (with intermediate materialization)
-- Standard execution time: 0.108s (without optimization)
-- Performance improvement: ~3.5x faster

The optimizer automatically rewrites the query to:

WITH _intermediate_materialize AS MATERIALIZED (
  SELECT * FROM sales WHERE region = 'US' AND product_id = 12345
)
SELECT * FROM _intermediate_materialize WHERE amount > 1000;

Parquet Buffering for Partitioned Writes: DuckDB partitioned writes in table mode now support Parquet buffering, reducing memory usage and improving write performance for large datasets.

Retention SQL on Refresh Commit: DuckDB accelerations now support running retention SQL on refresh commit, enabling automatic data cleanup and lifecycle management during refresh operations.

UTC Timezone for DuckDB: DuckDB now uses UTC as the default timezone, ensuring consistent behavior for time-based queries across different environments.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: s3://my_bucket/large_table/
    name: partitioned_data
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      engine: duckdb
      mode: file
      retention:
        sql: DELETE FROM partitioned_data WHERE event_time < NOW() - INTERVAL '7 days'

HTTP Data Connector​

• Querying endpoints as tables: The HTTP/HTTPS Data Connectors now supports querying HTTP endpoints directly as tables in SQL queries with dynamic filters. This feature transforms REST APIs into queryable data sources, making it easy to integrate external service data.

• Query HTTP endpoint that returns structured data (JSON, CSV, etc.) as if it were a database table

• Configurable retry logic, timeouts, and POST request support for more complex API interactions

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: https://api.tvmaze.com
    name: tvmaze
    params:
      file_format: json
      max_retries: 3
      client_timeout: 10s

Example SQL query:

SELECT request_path, request_query, content
FROM tvmaze
WHERE request_path = '/search/people' and request_query = 'q=michael'
LIMIT 10;

If a request_body is supplied it will be posted to the endpoint:

Example SQL query:

SELECT request_path, request_query, content
FROM tvmaze
WHERE request_path = '/search/people' and request_query = 'q=michael' and request_body = '{"name": "michael"}'
LIMIT 10;

HTTP endpoints can be accelerated using refresh_sql:

datasets:
  - from: https://api.tvmaze.com
    name: tvmaze
    acceleration:
      enabled: true
      refresh_mode: full
      refresh_sql: |
        SELECT request_path, request_query, content 
        FROM tvmaze
        WHERE request_path = '/search/people'
          AND request_query IN ('q=michael', 'q=luke')

DynamoDB Data Connector Improvements​

Improved Query Performance: The DynamoDB Data Connector now includes improved filter handling for edge cases, parallel scan support for faster data ingestion, and better error handling for misconfigured queries. These improvements enable more reliable and performant access to DynamoDB data.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: dynamodb:my_table
    name: ddb_data
    params:
      scan_segments: 10 # Default `auto` which calculates optimal segments based on number of rows

S3 Versioning Support​

Atomic Range Reads for Versioned Files: Spice now supports S3 Versioning for all connectors using object-store (S3, Delta Lake, etc.), ensuring range reads over versioned files are atomically correct. When S3 versioning is enabled, Spice automatically tracks version IDs during file discovery and uses them for all subsequent range reads, preventing inconsistencies from concurrent file modifications.

Current limitations:

• Multi-file connections (e.g., partitioned datasets) do not yet support version tracking across all files
• Version tracking is automatic when S3 versioning is enabled on the bucket

Search & Embeddings Enhancements​

Full-Text Search on Views: Full-text search indexes are now supported on views, enabling advanced search scenarios over pre-aggregated or transformed data. This extends the power of Spice's search capabilities beyond base datasets.

Multi-Column Embeddings on Views: Views now support embedding columns, enabling vector search and semantic retrieval on view data. This is useful for search over aggregated or joined datasets.

Vector Engines on Views: Vector search engines are now available for views, enabling similarity search over complex queries and transformations.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

views:
  - name: aggregated_reviews
    sql: SELECT review_id, review_text FROM reviews WHERE rating > 4
    embeddings:
      - column: review_text
        model: openai:text-embedding-3-small

Dedicated Query Thread Pool (Now Enabled by Default)​

Dedicated Query Thread Pool: Query execution and accelerated refreshes now run on their own dedicated thread pool, separate from the HTTP server. This prevents heavy query workloads from slowing down API responses, keeping health checks fast and avoiding unnecessary Kubernetes pod restarts under load.

This feature was opt-in in previous releases and is now enabled by default. To disable it and revert to the previous behavior, add the following spicepod.yaml configuration:

runtime:
  params:
    dedicated_thread_pool: none

Query Performance Optimizations​

Stale-While-Revalidate Cache Control: Query results now support "stale-while-revalidate" cache control, allowing stale cached data to be served immediately while asynchronously refreshing the cache entry in the background. This improves response times for frequently-accessed queries while maintaining data freshness. Requires cache key type to be set to "sql (raw)" for proper operation.

Optimized Prepared Statements: Prepared statement handling has been optimized for better performance with parameterized queries, reducing planning overhead and improving execution time for repeated queries.

Large RecordBatch Chunking: Large Arrow RecordBatch objects are now automatically chunked to control memory usage during query execution, preventing memory exhaustion for queries returning large result sets.

Query Result Cache: Stale-While-Revalidate​

HTTP Cache-Control Support: The query result cache now supports the stale-while-revalidate Cache-Control directive, enabling faster response times by serving stale cached results immediately while asynchronously refreshing the cache in the background. This feature is particularly useful for applications that can tolerate slightly stale data in exchange for improved performance.

How it works:

When a cache entry is stale but within the stale-while-revalidate window, Spice will:

1. Immediately return the stale cached result to the client
2. Asynchronously re-execute the query in the background to refresh the cache
3. Future requests will use the refreshed data

Configuration:

Use the Cache-Control HTTP header with the stale-while-revalidate directive:

Cache-Control: max-age=300, stale-while-revalidate=60

This configuration caches results for 5 minutes (300 seconds), and allows serving stale results for an additional 60 seconds while refreshing in the background.

Requirements:

• Must use plan or raw SQL cache keys (set cache_key_type to sql or plan in results_caching configuration)
• Background revalidation re-executes queries through the normal query path
• Timestamp tracking automatically determines cache entry age for staleness checks

Example configuration via HTTP header:

GET /v1/sql
Cache-Control: max-age=600, stale-while-revalidate=120
X-Cache-Key-Type: sql

This feature improves application responsiveness while ensuring data freshness through background updates.

Security & Reliability Improvements​

Enhanced HTTP Client Security: HTTP client usage across the runtime has been hardened with improved TLS validation, certificate pinning for critical endpoints, and better error handling for network failures.

ODBC Connector Improvements: Removed unwrap calls from the ODBC connector, improving error handling and reliability. Fixed secret handling and Kubernetes secret integration.

CLI Permissions Hardening: Tightened file permissions for the CLI and install script, ensuring secure defaults for configuration files and credentials.

Oracle Instant Client Pinning: Oracle Instant Client downloads are now pinned to specific SHAs, ensuring reproducible builds and preventing supply chain attacks.

AWS Authentication Improvements​

Improved Credential Retry Logic: AWS SDK credential initialization has been significantly improved with more robust retry logic and better error handling. The system now automatically retries transient credential resolution failures using Fibonacci backoff, allowing Spice to tolerate extended AWS outages (up to ~48 hours) without manual intervention.

Key features:

• Automatic retry with backoff: Implements Fibonacci backoff for transient credential failures (network issues, temporary AWS service disruptions)
• Configurable retry limits: Supports up to 300 retry attempts with a maximum retry interval of 600 seconds
• Better error handling: Distinguishes between retryable errors (connector errors) and non-retryable errors (misconfiguration)
• Unauthenticated access support: Properly supports unauthenticated access to public S3 buckets without requiring credentials
• Improved error messages: Provides detailed logging with attempt numbers, retry intervals, and error context for better troubleshooting

The improvements ensure more reliable AWS service integration, particularly in environments with intermittent network connectivity or during AWS service degradations.

Observability & Tracing​

DataFusion Log Emission: The Spice runtime now emits DataFusion internal logs, providing deeper visibility into query planning and execution for debugging and performance analysis.

AI Completions Tracing: Fixed tracing so that ai_completions operations are correctly parented under sql_query traces, improving observability for AI-powered queries.

Git Data Connector (Alpha)​

Version-Controlled Data Access: The new Git Data Connector (Alpha) enables querying datasets stored in Git repositories. This connector is ideal for use cases involving configuration files, documentation, or any data tracked in version control.

Example Spicepod.yml configuration:

datasets:
  - from: git:https://github.com/myorg/myrepo
    name: git_metrics
    params:
      file_format: csv

For more details, refer to the Git Data Connector Documentation.

Spice Java SDK 0.4.0​

The Spice Java SDK have been upgraded with support configurable Arrow memory limit: spice-java v0.4.0

SpiceClient client = SpiceClient.builder()
    .withArrowMemoryLimitMB(1024) // 1GB limit
    .build();

CLI Improvements​

Install Specific Versions: The spice install command now supports installing specific versions of the Spice runtime and CLI. This enables easy version management, downgrading, or installation of specific releases for testing or compatibility requirements.

Usage:

# Install a specific version
spice install v1.8.3

# Install a specific version with AI flavor
spice install v1.8.3 ai

# Install latest version (existing behavior)
spice install
spice install ai

Note: Homebrew installations require manual version management via brew install spiceai/spiceai/spice@<version>.

Persistent Query History: The Spice CLI REPL (SQL, search, and chat interfaces) now persists command history to ~/.spice/query_history.txt, making your query history available across sessions. The history file is automatically created if it doesn't exist, with graceful fallback if the home directory cannot be determined.

New REPL Commands:

• .clear - Clear the screen using ANSI escape codes for a clean workspace
• .clear history - Clear and persist the query history, removing all stored commands

Tab Completion: Tab completion now includes suggestions based on your command history, making it faster to re-run or modify previous queries.

Example usage:

sql> SELECT * FROM my_table;
sql> .clear          # Clears the screen
sql> .clear history  # Clears command history
sql> # Use arrow keys or tab to access previous commands

Additional Improvements & Bug Fixes​

• Reliability: Fixed refresh worker panics with recovery handling to prevent runtime crashes during acceleration refreshes.
• Reliability: Improved error messages for missing or invalid spicepod.yaml files, providing actionable feedback for misconfiguration.
• Reliability: Fixed DuckDB metadata pointer loading issues for snapshots.
• Performance: Ensured ListingTable partitions are pruned correctly when filters are not used.
• Reliability: Fixed vector dimension determination for partitioned indexes.
• Search: Fixed casing issues in Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) for hybrid search queries.
• Search: Fixed search field handling as metadata for chunked search indexes.
• Validation: Added timestamp support for partition expressions.
• Validation: Fixed regexp_match function for DuckDB datasets.
• Validation: Fixed partition name validation for improved reliability.

Contributors​

• @Jeadie
• @lukekim
• @peasee
• @phillipleblanc
• @sgrebnov
• @kczimm
• @krinart
• @mach-kernel

Breaking Changes​

No breaking changes.

Cookbook Updates​

New HTTP Data Connector Recipe: New recipe demonstrating how to query REST APIs and HTTP(s) endpoints. See HTTP Connector Recipe for details.

The Spice Cookbook includes 82 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.

Upgrading​

To upgrade to v1.9.0-rc.4, use one of the following methods:

CLI:

spice upgrade

Homebrew:

brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice

Docker:

Pull the spiceai/spiceai:1.9.0-rc.4 image:

docker pull spiceai/spiceai:1.9.0-rc.4

For available tags, see DockerHub.

Helm:

helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai

AWS Marketplace:

🎉 Spice is now available in the AWS Marketplace!

What's Changed​

Dependencies​

• DataFusion: Upgraded to v50
• Apache Arrow: Upgraded to v56
• DuckDB: Upgraded to v1.4.2
• Delta Kernel: Upgraded to v0.16.0

Changelog (rc.4)​

• Upgrade shutdown signal Ordering by @krinart in #8017
• Set max-age: 0 during stale by @lukekim in #8018
• Add E2E test release for Helm by @lukekim in #8023
• Update generate_changelog script by @krinart in #8028
• [CLI] Improve auto-complete by @lukekim in #8022
• Improve verify helm workflow by @lukekim in #8024
• fix: Ensure Vortex UncompressedSizeInBytes is calculated by @peasee in #8044
• WW README Update by @wyattwenzel in #8058
• Reenable dynamic federation support by @Jeadie in #8026
• fix: Prevent SortExec from ordering below SchemaCastScanExec by @peasee in #8061
• Skip logging and return OK() on error during shutdown by @krinart in #8057
• Partition pruning with complex expressions by @lukekim in #8040
• Make DynamoDB snapshots consistent by @krinart in #8069
• Add check for error log by @krinart in #8070
• Fix tracing of 's3_vector_query_and_get' by @Jeadie in #8065
• DuckDB v1.4.2 by @mach-kernel in #8073
• Fix failing OpenAI test by @krinart in #8076
• Enable 'test_recency_scoring' by @Jeadie in #8068
• Test operator: avoid duplicate Flight requests when using --http-clients by @sgrebnov in #8071
• Update load tests to use truth percentile values by @sgrebnov in #8079
• Update DynamoDB to RC by @krinart in #8060
• CachedQueryVector to avoid recomputing embedding vector for spilling/partitioned vector indexes. by @Jeadie in #8059
• Fix DuckDB on_commit sink race by @lukekim in #8081
• Add partitioned duckdb by @lukekim in #8083
• [CLI] Security and santization by @lukekim in #8082
• Fix partition_by expression by @lukekim in #8087
• Data Components security fixes and sanitization by @lukekim in #8086
• Runtime security and sanitization by @lukekim in #8088
• Add spicepod-validator tool and fix spicepods by @lukekim in #8089
• Skip data fetches for S3 single file refreshes by @lukekim in #8072
• MCP security and sanitization by @lukekim in #8090
• Add install-dev target back to Makefile by @Jeadie in #8100
• fix 'testoperator run search' by @Jeadie in #8101
• Update datafusion-table-providers - fix nullability inferences for MySQL and PostgreSQL, and fix full text search for PostgreSQL by @ewgenius in #8092
• Remove duplicate install-with-models by @phillipleblanc in #8107
• Improve Cayenne partitioning by @lukekim in #8097
• Testoperator dispatch: respect verify_results dispatch configuration by @sgrebnov in #8106
• Include 'match' column only if chunk offsets found in seach query 'LogicalPlan' by @Jeadie in #8102
• Fix validation path by @lukekim in #8109
• Fix dispatch paths by @lukekim in #8110
• Fix dispatch spicepod paths by @lukekim in #8112
• Update test Spicepods by @lukekim in #8131
• Add validation to reference schema by @lukekim in #8111
• Include root error when failing to find latest timestamp in accelerated table by @sgrebnov in #8132
• fix: HTTP Connector validation, query and body by @lukekim in #8115
• Update nsql model list by @lukekim in #8141
• Update DynamoDB Benchmarks by @krinart in #8135
• Fix Dremio E2E test by @sgrebnov in #8139
• Improve HTTP Connector UX by @lukekim in #8146
• QueryOverrides for DynamoDB benchmarks by @krinart in #8151
• test-framework: add row count validation skipping with TPC-DS defaults by @sgrebnov in #8149
• Suppress delta_kernel::listed_log_files warnings by @phillipleblanc in #8158
• Update table providers to fix warning by @phillipleblanc in #8156
• Suppress MCP limit log by @phillipleblanc in #8159
• Remove incorrect tool name validation by @Jeadie in #8161
• Disable results validation for federated/glue[csv].yaml by @phillipleblanc in #8163
• Fix dynamodb overrides by @phillipleblanc in #8165
• Fix dynamo db overrides again by @phillipleblanc in #8166
• few more dynamodb overrides by @phillipleblanc in #8167
• Add stub release notes for v1.9.0-rc.4 by @phillipleblanc in #8168