This chapter describes what new features are introduced in V8.0 and what upgrade tasks may be required of existing customers.
Volt 8 is a major release incorporating features from recent point releases plus new capabilities. The major new features in V8 include:
More Network Security — Volt now provides SSL/TLS encryption as an option on all inter-node and inter-cluster communication, including internal, external, and DR ports. See the chapter on "Security" in the Using VoltDB manual for details.
User-Defined Functions — It is now possible to define and declare your own functions for use in SQL statements. User-defined functions are written in Java and declared using the CREATE FUNCTION statement. See the chapter on "Creating Custom SQL Functions" in the Volt Guide to Performance and Customization manual for details.
Common Table Expressions — Volt SQL queries can now include common table expressions, using the WITH clause. Common table expressions help organize complex SQL queries and make them easier to read. Volt also supports recursive common table expressions, making it possible to evaluate complex tree and graph structures within a single statement. See the description of the SELECT statement in the Using VoltDB manual for details.
Kafka Enhancements — Volt now supports the latest releases of Apache Kafka, by default. The Kafka export connector continues to support all Kafka versions starting with 0.8.2. For import, the Kafka import connector and the kafkaloader command line utility now support Kafka 0.10.2 and later, up through and including the recently released version 1.0.0. For customers still using earlier versions of Kafka, Kafka 8 support is available as a configurable option for both the import connector and a legacy kafkaloader8 command line tool.
Python V3 API — Volt now supports the use of Python V3.x for developing client applications. The Volt Python client library (available from GitHub) supports both Python 2.7 and 3.x.
Documentation