What’s New in the Database World? March 2018 Release Roundup

RDBMS Family

Oracle 18c Exadata was announced on 16 Feb 2018 and made generally available on 1 Mar 2018 on Oracle Cloud. The release drops 32‑bit support, fully embraces x86‑64, and introduces a yearly versioning scheme (e.g., 19c will be the final long‑term‑support release of the 12.2 line). LiveSQL can be accessed at https://livesql.oracle.com.

MySQL 5.7.21 (15 Jan 2018) adds enhanced audit logging with compression and encryption, deprecates several parameters (e.g., innodb_undo_tablespaces), removes the setup_timers table from Performance Schema, and fixes memory‑size issues on ARM64/PowerPC. Release notes:

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/5.7/en/news-5-7-21.html

.

MariaDB 10.2.13 (12 Mar 2018) introduces MyRocks storage engine (beta), updates InnoDB to 5.7.21, upgrades Galera library to 25.3.23, fixes EXCHANGE PARTITION bugs, resolves MVCC read crashes, and patches foreign‑key bugs. Note: Percona XtraBackup 2.4+ cannot be used with MariaDB 10.2; MariaDB Backup provides compression.

SQL Server continues to improve performance since 2016, excelling in TPC‑E/H benchmarks and HTAP workloads (e.g., 1.2 M batches/sec on 480‑core CPUs). Adaptive Query Processing addresses memory‑grant and join issues; a Trace Flag 2371 can be enabled to make statistics updates asynchronous and reduce overhead.

DB2 v11.1.2.2 adds column‑store concurrent inserts, crash‑recovery connectivity, native JSON querying, independent recovery of HADR tablespaces, lock‑upgrade avoidance, faster transaction rollback, and enhanced federation with PostgreSQL and MySQL.

CitusDB 7.2 (early 2018) extends PostgreSQL with distributed sharding, automatic replication, and cloud‑or‑hybrid deployment. New features include CTE support, complex sub‑queries, UNION/INTERSECT operations, distributed/local table mixing, non‑equality joins, and automated partition management via pg_partman.

NoSQL Family

MongoDB 4.0 (expected summer 2018) will finally support ACID transactions, turning MongoDB into a competitive OLTP platform for e‑commerce, finance and telecom use cases. The beta program is available at http://mongodb.com/transactions/.

Neo4j 3.3 adds numeric local indexes, 40‑70 % interpreter speed gains, 40 % memory savings on bulk imports, up to 55 % faster writes vs 3.2, and includes PageRank, centrality and path‑finding algorithms in the APOC library.

NewSQL Family

TiDB 2.0 RC1 (9 Mar 2018) is an open‑source HTAP database compatible with MySQL. Highlights: per‑SQL memory limit, push‑down aggregation to TiKV, configuration validation, PD region‑state checks, improved logging, TiKV disk‑space monitoring, and a new gRPC metrics API. Documentation: https://github.com/pingcap/docs-cn.

CockroachDB 2.0 (upcoming) builds on 1.1 series with CSV import, SHOW QUERIES (MySQL‑like), scaling to 128 nodes, 17× backup‑restore speed, S3‑backed enterprise backups, native JSON type, distributed UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT, DDL cancel, and a Global Database feature for multi‑region deployments.

Time‑Series

InfluxDB 1.5.0 (6 Mar 2018) is a Go‑based open‑source distributed time‑series database offering time‑series functions, real‑time metrics computation, and generic event storage. Download: https://portal.influxdata.com/downloads.

Big‑Data Ecosystem

Hadoop released three versions in Dec 2017: 2.8.3, 3.0.0 GA and 2.7.5.

Druid 0.12.0 adds priority task locking, automatic segment management, A/B‑testing post‑aggregator, quantile aggregator in datasketch, and basic authentication extensions. Release notes: https://github.com/druid-io/druid/releases.

Apache HAWQ 2.3.0.0 introduces pluggable storage, Hadoop‑TDE encryption, ORC vectorized reads via PXF, and deeper integration with Ranger (HA, Kerberos).

Chinese Domestic Databases Overview

KingbaseES V8.0 (Mar 2018) offers 99.999 % availability, multi‑mode backup/replication, a migration tool, full SQL/ODBC/JDBC compatibility, a new IDE, and parallel execution plans for high‑concurrency workloads.

K‑DB 11g (浪潮) provides high performance, high availability, true shared‑disk clustering, enhanced I/O processes, storage virtualization, and multiple indexing/partitioning options.

Oushu Database 3.1.0 (北京偶数科技) is a HAWQ‑based data‑warehouse with compute‑storage separation, ANSI‑SQL compliance, Oracle/Greenplum/PostgreSQL compatibility, and PB‑scale interactive queries.

OceanBase 1.4.61 (2 Mar 2018) powered Alibaba’s Double‑11 peak (42 M TPS). New Oracle‑compatible features: MERGE and DML RETURNING.

SequoiaDB Enterprise v2.8.3 (2017) adds distributed OLTP, object storage, NoSQL coverage, cross‑region disaster recovery, and was recognized by Gartner alongside Alibaba Cloud and GBase.

Newsletter Initiative

DBAplus Newsletter aims to provide a neutral, technology‑focused overview of database trends across RDBMS, NoSQL, NewSQL, big‑data, virtualization and domestic solutions, publishing roughly every three months.