Release notes for IBM Cloudant Classic

Upcoming changes

The following changes are planned for the next release:

Legacy authentication

To enhance security, Cloudant will enable temporary lockout of accounts in the coming months. After multiple login attempts using incorrect credentials, further login attempts will be denied for a period of time. To unlock your account, please wait for some time or change the password and then wait at least 5 minutes to ensure that the change propagates throughout the system.

The temporary lockout described here applies to legacy (non-IAM) credentials only.

14 January 2025

Provisioning

Allow creation of Dedicated Hardware plan instances in the Chennai region.

8 January 2025

The following changes were made in build 8543:

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 26 release.

22 November 2024

The following changes were made in build 8542:

X-Couch-Request-ID HTTP header

Allow users to specify the request ID using X-Couch-Request-ID header, which is useful for tracking down requests that fail to start in a timely manner when using a load balancer in front.

Cloudant Query

Introduced allow_fallback (boolean) query parameter that determines whether _find can fall back to a full database scan if the query does not specify an index, or if the specified index is invalid for the query. If allow_fallback=false, a 400 Bad Request is returned. The default value is true.

Prevent inserting illegal design documents via _index POST request.

Replication

Improve the robustness of replication.

Runtime environment

Downgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 25 release.

Welcome message

JavaScript engine quickjs will show up in the list of welcome features if enabled as the default JavaScript engine.

23 October 2024

The following changes were made in build 8537:

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 26 release.

16 October 2024

The following changes were made in build 8536:

_changes endpoint

If the request includes limit parameter, continuous / eventsource feed emission will stop after emitting the specified number of rows.

Replicator

Prevent the replicator from creating conflicts in replication documents.

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 25 release.

19 September 2024

The following changes were made in build 8534:

Legacy authentication

Prepare for migration to a more secure password hashing scheme.

Runtime environment

Downgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 25.

5 September 2024

The following changes were made in build 8524:

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 26 release.

7 August 2024

The following changes were made in build 8521:

_scheduler endpoint

Return a 400 Bad Request response for _scheduler/docs/{path} in case of an invalid path, instead of 500 function_clause.

_search_analyze endpoint

Authentication is now required to access the _search_analyze endpoint.

COPY request

Prevent creation of new documents if Destination header begins with _ using the COPY method.

Replication

Improve robustness of replication during rebalancing.

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 25 release.

Welcome message

The CouchDB version in the welcome message was updated from "major.minor.patch" to "major.minor.patch+cloudant", eg: 3.3.3+cloudant. Cloudant applies its own customizations, extensions, and security fixes atop upstream CouchDB, therefore the CouchDB version number could be considered only a reference for compatibility. To make this distinction clear, the +cloudant suffix was introduced.

10 June 2024

The following changes were made in build 8513:

IAM authentication

JSON web tokens (JWT) added the exp claim to ensure that user tokens are considered invalid once they expire.

Replicator

Fix replicator session plugin to consider only Set-Cookie headers with AuthSession set and ignore others.

5 June 2024

The following changes were made in build 8511:

IAM authentication

Refresh access tokens when credentials change. Previously, an access token was allowed to expire before obtaining a new one with the new credentials.

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 25 release.

Add QuickJS as a Javascript engine option.

26 April 2024

The following changes were made in build 8510:

IAM authentication

Add support for database resources in IAM access policies.

Cloudant Query

Fix a race condition that resulted in some query response execution stats incorrectly reporting zero for total_keys_examined. See https://github.com/apache/couchdb/issues/4560 for more details.

Replicator

Fix case clause error in replicator response. For more information, see Advanced replication.

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 25.3.2.11 release.

25 March 2024

The following changes were made in build 8495:

Optimization

Added compatibility for OTP 25 and improved performance.

20 March 2024

Several updates were made to Service Changes & Deprecations - removing TXE notification; adding previously announced deprecation of _show, _list, _update, _rewrite functions; removing _find API accounting notice.

8 March 2024

List of IBM Cloudant instances hosted on a dedicated environment

The IBM Cloud Console GUI for IBM Cloudant instances on dedicated hardware plan now shows the list of instances hosted on the dedicated environment.

6 March 2024

The following changes were made in build 8490:

Runtime environment

Upgrade runtime environment back to Erlang/OTP 25 after addressing the related production issues.

12 February 2024

The following changes were made in build 8472:

Indexes

In rare cases, background index updates for specific indexes would fail until a database node was restarted. After a node restart, the node would immediately start updating these indexes. If this generated a lot of indexing activity, customer requests involving this node would see degraded performance during that activity. This release fixes the issue with background indexing failures. For more information, see Cloudant Query.

Replication

Improve performance when updating replication documents.

Fix replication delays caused by conflicting jobs during internal data optimization. For more information, see Replication.

Runtime environment

Downgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 24.

10 January 2024

The following changes were made in build 8469:

Runtime environment

Upgrade to Erlang/OTP-25.3.2.8.

04 December 2023

The following changes were made in build 8462:

_active_tasks

Optimize _active_tasks to better handle heavy workloads.

Indexing

Improve robustness of index compaction.

Cloudant Query

Introduce $beginsWith operator.

Runtime environment

Downgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 24.

Security

Allow stronger on-disk password hashes without impacting database request performance.

17 November 2023

IBM Cloudant Dashboard

Update the Cloudant Query explain page with a user-friendly view of the JSON output. The parsed view better explains how indexes are chosen to help the user create more efficient queries.

24 October 2023

The following changes were made in build 8452:

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 25 release.

18 October 2023

The following changes were made in build 8451:

Security

Scrub sensitive headers from JSON requests.

13 October 2023

The following changes were made in build 8448:

_db_updates endpoint

Remove _db_updates endpoint support.

Cloudant Query

Correct _explain API to always return an array for fields. Return [] instead of "all_fields" if the fields parameter was unset.

Prevent occasional duplication of paginated text results.

Legacy authentication

Send compatible AuthSession cookie when possible.

Replicator

Fix badrecord error when cancelling transient replication job.

Replace kaboom with open_doc_revs_failed error.

Use HTTP rules for hostname verification.

14 September 2023

The following changes were made in build 8442:

_changes feed

Improve emitted changes feed sequence after a split.

Return the correct number of pending changes when descending=true.

Design documents

_design_docs/queries / _local_docs/queries with parameter keys will return only design / local documents respectively.

Legacy authentication

Send a session cookie after successful basic authentication to migrate users to a strong password hashing scheme without impacting performance for each request.

Cloudant query

Remove duplicate elements from indexable_fields results.

Correct the _explain endpoint r response field content from a byte array to an integer to match the declared API type.

Rename the _explain endpoint response covered field name to covering to match correctly the Apache CouchDB name.

Replicator

Fix undefined range in mem3_rep purge replication logic.

Crash replication jobs on unexpected 4XX errors.

Add CouchDB-Replicator/... user agent to replicator /_session requests.

Search

Correct the representation of empty faceted results from 0 to {} to match the declared API type.

See PR.

Shard splitting

Allow resumption of failed jobs, and make timeout configurable.

Optimization

Stop the client process and clean up if the client disconnects.

30 August 2023

The following changes were made in build 8435:

_all_dbs endpoint

Restrict _all_dbs to accept only binary start_key/end_key parameters.

_replicate endpoint

Authentication is required to access the _replicate endpoint.

Cloudant Query

Improve error messages in case of invalid field errors.

Replicator

Remove replicator endpoint proxy support.

21 July 2023

The following changes were made in build 8430:

Attachments

Fix multipart parser "attachment longer than expected" error.

Remove Content-MD5 header support.

Replace MD5 with xxHash in ETag generation.

Cloudant Query

Return correct keys_examined value in execution_stats field.

Improve error messages of the _index endpoint.

Optimization

Speed up internal replicator.

Optimize low-level file name calculations.

Use a faster sets implementation available since OTP 24.

Replicator

Handle replicator instance start time during upgrades better.

Resharding

Fix purge infos replicating to the wrong shards during shard splitting.

05 June 2023

The following changes were made in build 8413:

_all_docs endpoint

Do not return documents for non-string key parameter.

Filter view functions

Optimize by not unnecessarily re-compiling filter view functions.

Geospatial

Remove geospatial functionality.

Javascript

Treat javascript internal errors (such as Out of Memory) as fatal.

_local_docs endpoint

Hide internal checkpoint documents by default in the _local_docs response.

Cloudant Query

Return correct documents for queries with $regex and text indexes.

Optimize queries using keys-only covering indexes.

Add new covered Boolean field to _explain endpoint to indicate whether query is covered by an index.

Return 405 instead of 500 for invalid path under _index endpoint.

Partitioned database queries

Fix permissions required for partitioned _find and _explain endpoints.

Runtime environment

Upgrade to the latest Erlang/OTP 24 release.

View query

Treat single element keys parameter same as key.

03 April 2023

IBM Cloudant Dashboard

Update Dashboard to use Carbon 11's color theme.

The following changes were made in build 8382:

Indexing

Prevent couch_index_server from crashing under load.

Runtime environment

Upgrade the runtime environment to latest Erlang/OTP 24 point release.

14 March 2023

The following changes were made in build 8373:

_changes endpoint

Enforce document ids _changes filter optimization limit.

Compaction

Active database size now decreases when users delete documents.

Indexing

Enforce partition index count limits for (noninternally) replicated documents.

Optimize process pool management (fixes CVE-2023-26268).

Query

Optimize by pushing down field selectors to shards.

Replication

Replace auto-inserted VDU with BDU.

Constrain protocol types and socket options.

Upload design docs individually when you replicate with bulk_get.

Runtime environment

Upgrade the runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 24 point release patched with alias-cleanup-fix.

Views

Disable stable and stale parameters in POST requests to partitioned views.

11 January 2023

The following changes were made in build 8349:

IAM trusted profiles

Fix bug in IAM trusted profiles.

Runtime environment

Upgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 24.

17 November 2022

The following changes were made in build 8341:

_bulk_get endpoint

Optimize _bulk_get endpoint.

_changes endpoint

Fix eventsource formatted feed.

Remove support for the long-deprecated change sequence format.

dbcopy

Prevent further use of dbcopy feature for all but current users.

Compaction

Fix smoosh get_priority/2 case clause.

Replication

Use the _bulk_get endpoint for replication if available.

Return a string for the default start sequence from _scheduler/{jobs,docs} endpoints.

_session endpoint

Return error when POSTing to /_session with content type other than application/x-www-form-urlencoded or application/json.

Runtime environment

Upgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 23 patch release.

21 September 2022

The following changes were made in build 8336:

Runtime environment

Upgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 23 patch release.

View collation

Upgrade view collator to libicu 67.1.

5 August 2022

The following changes were made in build 8335:

Bulk docs

Improve performance for _bulk_docs endpoint.

Compaction

Fix bugs in automatic compaction.

Fix race between database deletion and compaction.

Document updates

Improve reliability of document updates during heavy load.

Return a 400 response for new_edits=false document update without revisions.

Replicator

Introduce numerous performance improvements.

10 June 2022

The following changes were made in build 8310:

All databases

Fix skip and limit parameters for _all_dbs and _dbs_info endpoints.

Attachments

Wait until attachments are uploaded before response to client.

Bulk docs

Return 500 errors if timeouts occur when documents are bulk loaded.

Compaction

Retain compactor state across node reboots.

IAM authentication

Retry authz endpoint on failure.

Indexes

Prevent creation of indexes with empty name or ddoc fields.

Improve index building during shard splitting.

Replicator

Improve replicator stability during timeouts.

25 May 2022

Virtual Private Endpoints (VPE)

VPE can now be created for IBM Cloudant instances on dedicated hardware.

13 May 2022

The following changes were made in build 8299:

Runtime environment

Upgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 23 with fix for memory leak.

Replicator

Fix function_clause error for replicated changes with a target VDU.

14 April 2022

The following changes were made in build 8287:

Runtime environment

Downgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 20.

24 March 2022

The following changes were made in build 8278:

IAM authentication

Improve compatibility during upgrades.

Document updates and compaction

Improve efficiency of updating and compacting conflicted documents.

11 March 2022

The following changes were made in build 8269:

Runtime environment

Upgrade runtime environment to Erlang/OTP 23.

04 March 2022

The following changes were made in build 8266:

Bulk docs

Return 400 Bad Request error for _bulk_docs with new_edits:false and without _rev. Previously returned 500 error.

Fix bug where Validate Document Update function interacts with new_edits:false setting.

Indexing

Improve scalability by sharding the index server.

Replicator

Set instance_start_time to the creation time of the database to restore the ability for the replicator to detect a database recreation event during a replication.

Search

Expose index signature in the _search_info endpoint response.

Security

Always send all the cookie attributes whenever we send a cookie. Only the value of AuthSession varies.

Views

Track ICU collator version that is used to build the view and expose this information in existing endpoints.

Exposes list of collator versions in _design/*/_info endpoint response.

The opaque collator version in _node/*/_versions endpoint response.

28 January 2022

Switch Legacy Credentials and IAM to IAM only

It is now possible to switch authentication methods from Legacy Credentials and IAM to IAM only by using the IBM Cloud console.

03 December 2021

IBM Cloud Monitoring integration

Metrics are now available in the Frankfurt region.

01 November 2021

The following changes were made in build 8243:

Audit messages

Order customer supplied fields last in audit messages.

Changes feed

Reduce changes feed rewinds when nodes are down or shards are moved.

View collation

Fix reduce view collation results for Unicode equivalent keys.

01 October 2021

The following changes were made in build 8238:

Changes feed

Use shards moved from other nodes to help prevent changes feed rewind.

Error message

Reduce frequency of No DB shards could be opened error message.

Shards with purge sequences

Fix splitting shards with large purge sequences.

View results

Fix view results with limit=0 and sorted=false.

Sort view results

Properly sort view results with descending=true when a key list is provided.

Row aggregation

Stabilize view merge row aggregation.

1 September 2021

The following changes were made in build 8220.

Changes feed rewinds

Avoid changes feed rewinds after shard moves.

Response code

Fix response code for attachment deletion with wrong revision.

Indexes

Ensure that indexes are correctly closed.

1 August 2021

The following changes were made in build 8202:

IAM trusted profiles

Support IAM trusted profiles.

15 August 2021

The following changes were made in build 8201:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

1 June 2021

The following changes were made in build 8194:

API task filtering

Bug fixes, including account API key task filtering.

Replication support

Support replication basic auth credentials in auth object.

Basic auth credentials

No longer display basic auth credentials (for example, username:*****) in the output of these endpoints:

• _scheduler/jobs
• _scheduler/docs
• _active_tasks

1 April 2021

The following changes were made in build 8192:

New! Fair share replicator

Added Fair share replicator. For more information, see Fair Share Replication Scheduler Implementation.

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

15 March 2021

The following changes were made in build 8182:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

Caching

Apply caching to account-local _users databases.

Error condition

Treat 408 as a retryable error condition for replicator.

Compressed requests

Allow compressed (gzipped) requests to /_session endpoint.

/_active_tasks endpoint

Show process status in /_active_tasks endpoint.

/{DB}/_changes endpoint

Validate JSON payload on POST to /{DB}/_changes endpoint.

1 December 2020

The following changes were made in build 8169:

New! Cloudant query operator

Introduce the query operator, $keyMapMatch that offers the ability to make queries on the keys of a map.

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

Database reporting

Report the database that was used for authentication for a GET /_session request, provided it is configured.

1 September 2020

The following changes were made in build 8162:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

Drilldown parameters

Drilldown parameters for text index searches can now be specified as a list of lists, which gives you the ability to avoid having to define it redundantly in a single query. Some languages don't have this facility.

couch_index server

The couch_index server doesn't crash and log errors in the following cases: If a design document is deleted while that index is building, or when a design document is added immediately after database creation.

Invalid parameters

IBM Cloudant now checks for and reports invalid parameters on database creation.

1 July 2020

The following changes were made in build 8158:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

15 May 2020

The following changes were made in build 8153:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

1 April 2020

The following changes were made in build 8152:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

15 March 2020

The following changes were made in build 8142:

New! Endpoints

New endpoints were added, so you can post multiple queries: POST /{db}/_all_docs/queries and POST /{db}/_design_docs/queries.

Multiple queries

The ability to submit multiple queries against a view by using the POST to /{db}/_design/{ddoc}/_view/{view} with the ?queries option was replaced by the new queries endpoint. The same is true of the _all_docs and _design_docs endpoints. Specify a keys object when you POST to these endpoints.

disk_size and data_size fields

The disk_size and data_size fields were retired from the database information object that is returned by GET /{db}.

/{db}/_changes feed

The /{db}/_changes feed immediately returns headers now, even when no changes are available. This process prevents client's from becoming blocked.

Negative and noninteger heartbeat values

Negative and noninteger heartbeat values now return a 400 Bad Request response status code.

Separate proxies

Allow specifying separate proxies for both the source and target in a replication by using source_proxy and target_proxy keys.

POST view function

The POST view function now supports identical parameters and behavior as specified in the /{db}/_design/{ddoc}/_view/{view}, /{db}/_all_docs, and /{db}/_design_docs endpoints. You can supply query string parameters as keys in a JSON object in the body of the POST request.

Replication errors

Replication "info" errors are now JSON objects. Previously, they were strings.

Replication support

A compatibility change was made to support replication with future databases that contain per-document access control fields.

Warning message

Add a warning to the _find endpoint if multiple document scans were required to generate a result.

_find endpoint error

Fix a bug in the _find endpoint whereby an error would be returned if a document matched by a text index was deleted while the query was being processed.

15 January 2020

The following changes were made in build 8126:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

Replication error reports

Improvements to replication error reporting - instead of a function_clause, human-readable markers are returned, for example, bulk_docs_failed. Stack traces are no longer included.

Replication job statistics

Replication job statistics, such as docs_read, docs_written, and doc_write_failures are preserved when replication jobs restart.

Replication jobs

Replication jobs to a target endpoint by using IAM Writer permissions no longer crash and continuously restart when they write design documents. Instead, the doc_write_failures statistic is incremented for each failed design document write. This behavior is consistent with replicating by using the legacy API-key-based authentication.

1 November 2019

The following changes were made in build 8111:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

Replication statistics

The _scheduler/docs endpoint now includes more detailed replication statistics to match _active_tasks output. It also includes details on replications that started with _replicate.

Replication error

Fix an instance where the replicator failed a replication but the error was recoverable.

Empty payload

Fix a bug introduced in recent builds where sending an empty payload to _bulk_docs would result in a 400 response status code rather than accepting the no-op operation.

21 October 2019

Multiple restrictions employed for performance gains

IBM released exciting new capabilities for IBM Cloudant that are available now. IBM Cloudant documented the deprecation of some functionality, and also, new restrictions for other processes. A communication was released that details the exact timeline when these restrictions go into effect. If you use any of the following functions or are concerned about how to make the necessary application changes, reach out to support by email. The following functions are affected by this deprecation:

• Remove the offset field from the response body of an all_docs request. The IBM Cloudant team recommends that you use paging with start_key / end_key and limit.

• The _sorted field has no functional effect because all responses are sorted automatically.

• Duration of operations has a 5-second limit. Transactions lasting more than 5 seconds fail.

• Limitations on keys (10 KB) and values (100 KB) that are emitted from a map function are shown in the following list:

  • The sum of all keys that are emitted for a document cannot exceed 100 KB.
  • Emitted keys cannot exceed 10 KB.
  • Values cannot exceed 100 KB.
  • In rare cases, the number of key-value pairs that are emitted for a map function can affect database performance or violate IBM Cloudant rules. For example, the number of key-value pairs might lead to a transaction either exceeding 10 MB, which isn’t allowed, or exceeding 5 MB, which impacts the performance of the database. In this situation, IBM Cloudant returns an error.

• The stable = true option is no longer supported, and the stale = "ok" option is converted to update = false.

15 October 2019

The following changes were made in build 8106:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

1 October 2019

The following changes were made in build 8103:

X-Cloudant-Action HTTP response header

New X-Cloudant-Action HTTP response header that returns the IBM Cloud® IAM actions that are associated with a request.

Search requests

Previously, search requests would return a 400 status code both on a bad request and on internal server errors. Now, internal server errors correctly return a 500 response status code.

18 September 2019

Replaced deprecated database information fields

Calls to GET /{db} were replaced by the following fields:

Database information fields

Old Field	New Field
data_size	sizes.active
disk_size	sizes.file
other.data_size	sizes.external

Calls to GET /{db}/_design/{ddoc}/_info were replaced by the following fields:

Design doc information fields

Old Field	New Field
data_size	sizes.external
disk_size	sizes.file

1 June 2019

The following changes were made in build 8076:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

Stability

Stability improvements.

15 May 2019

The following changes were made in build 8070:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

1 May 2019

The following changes were made in build 8062:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

15 April 2019

The following changes were made in build 8058:

ibrowse HTTP client

Fixed bug in ibrowse HTTP client that leaves dead process IDs in the connection pool, and in some cases, caused persistent IAM-based replication failures.

1 April 2019

The following changes were made in build 8052:

partitioned_indexes field

Accessing the database information endpoint (/db/) for a partitioned database now includes information about the contained partitioned indexes. The new field, partitioned_indexes, contains the following information:

• The current number of partitioned indexes in the database (count).
• A breakdown of those indexes by type (indexes).
• The maximum partitioned indexes allowed for this database (limit).

15 March 2019

The following changes were made in build 8048:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes.

1 March 2019

The following changes were made in build 8038:

Partition queries

Allow POST when you search partition queries.

15 February 2019

The stale option

The stale option is deprecated and is replaced by stable and update, which allow controlling the two orthogonal behaviors that are caused by stale separately.

Stale option replacement

stable value	Equivalent by using stable and update
false	stable=false, update=true
ok	stable=true, update=false
update_after	stable=true, update=lazy

1 February 2019

The following changes were made in build 7681:

Partition query

Partition query bug fixes.

15 January 2019

The following changes were made in build 7668:

New! Partition query

This build introduces a new feature, partition query.

limit

Allow limit when you use POST for search.

View requests

Previously, view requests that use a limit parameter greater than 268435456 would have the limit that is silently reduced to 268435456. Now, requests with the limit parameter greater than 268435456 are rejected with a 400 Bad Request error.

1 January 2019

The following changes were made in build 7631:

Improvements

Internal changes and bug fixes.

1 December 2018

The following changes were made in build 7544:

Replicator statistics

Fixed a problem where the replicator would sometimes reset statistics during replications. The reset would affect values in the replication status information. See PR.

IBM Cloudant Query and _find request

Fixed an issue with IBM Cloudant Query. After you delete a document, if you issue a _find request to a text index with update=false, it might return a 500 response. See PR.

_bulk_get

You can now use multipart/mixed and multipart/related when you use _bulk_get. See PR.

_design_docs handler

Fix a bug with total row count in the _design_docs handler. See PR.

Replication filters

Optimizations to the _doc_id and _design_docs replication filters. See issue.

Index jobs

Fix a regression where long-running index jobs can fail.

4 November 18

The following changes were made in build 7410:

Improvements

Internal changes and bug fixes.

1 November 2018

The following changes were made in build 7426:

Improvements

Internal bug fixes to data compression, search, and core database components.

Audit logs

Include CRN in audit logs.

Replicator

Replicator stability improvements.

q parameter

Improve validation of q parameter on database creation. See COUCHDB-1582.

_bulk_get endpoint

Fix error in _bulk_get endpoint for the _users database. See COUCHDB-1650.

JavaScript URL rewrites

Fix JavaScript URL rewrites hanging on POST or PUT requests. See COUCHDB-1612.

IBM Cloudant Query and invalid reduce functions

Fix invalid reduce functions in IBM Cloudant Query indexes that prevent indexing. See COUCHDB-1666.

11 October 2018

The following changes were made in build 7304:

Improvements

This build is identical to build 7302 except that the build is on Erlang 17.5 instead of Erlang 20.

25 September 2018

The following changes were made in build 7302:

Cloudant Query

Improve Cloudant Query so that mixed clusters return correct results during upgrades.

Downgrade function

Add a downgrade function to support future cluster purge releases.

Search blocklist

Improve search blocklist.

18 September 2018

The following changes were made in build 7276:

Improvements

Add a filter for databases that are being opened asynchronously to prevent exceptions when couch_server terminates.

Concurrency error

Fix couch_server concurrency error.

Configuration option

Add a configuration option to disable off-heap messages.

13 September 2018

TLS 1.3 connection support

From today, IBM Cloudant supports TLS 1.3 connections to IBM Cloudant.

IBM Cloudant recommends that you use TLS 1.2 or 1.3 for all access to IBM Cloudant. (In June 2019, IBM Cloudant retired the use of older versions (TLS 1.0 and 1.1) at which point only TLS 1.2+ is supported.) Find more information on the Security page.

7 September 2018

The following changes were made in build 7205:

Refactor Cloudant Query selectors

Improve efficiency of Cloudant Query by adding support for predicate push-down to database shards.

Document update errors

Expose document update errors on concurrent document updates to client.

render_error errors

Fix render_error errors where the req object that is passed to the JavaScript list function is set to noproc Atom.

1 August 2018

The following changes were made in build 7138:

Erlang

Upgrade to Erlang OTP 20.

15 August 2018

The following changes were made in build 7137:

Validation of configuration parameters

Improve validation of configuration parameters supplied by administrator.

Compaction

While compaction is running, delete compaction files when database is deleted.

Sandboxing feature

Improve sandboxing features.

Authentication check

Optimize authentication check.

Semantics

Change semantics of status codes for delete database.

conflicts: true support

Support conflicts: true for queries to the /{db}/_find endpoint.

update_seq field

Preserve update_seq field across view compaction.

12 July 2018

The following changes were made in build 7084:

stats reducer

Refactor code for _stats reducer.

Views

Fix active size calculations for views.

couch_key_tree algorithm

Rewrite the couch_key_tree algorithm to reduce its computational complexity and avoid calling stemming when unnecessary.

Allocation strategy

Change the allocation strategy for the message queue for each important process, so it's not stored on the heap of that process.

Internal audit facility

Improvements to internal audit facility.

Constant fields

Any constant fields that are in the selector, and are part of the index. For example, {A: {$eq: 10}} is inserted into the sort list if they aren't already included. This method increases the chance that the best index is selected for the query, for example, index = [A, B], sort = [B], and selector = {A: 1}. The sort then becomes [A, B].

Only the fields that are in front of the current sort fields in the list are added.

29 June 2018

The following changes were made in build 7051:

Forward compatibility clause

Add forward compatibility clause for _stats disk format change.

Compatibility clause

Add compatibility clause for attachment receiver to facilitate Erlang upgrade.

Audit facility

Improvements to internal audit facility.

12 June 2018

The following changes were made in build 7014:

Query selector

Remove the requirement to cover _id or _rev in the query selector in order to use a JSON index that explicitly contains them.

29 May 2018

The following changes were made in build 6979:

Audit facility

Improve internal audit facility.

14 May 2018

The following changes were made in build 6919:

New! Action, DELETE

Introduce new action, DELETE, on the /_iam_session endpoint, which invalidates the IAM session cookie.

Improvements

Remove outdated dependencies.

26 April 2018

The following changes were made in build 6909:

Improvements

Improve compatibility with IAM.

http multipart requests

Fix badarg error in the module that parses http multipart requests.

25 April 2018

The following changes were made in build 6900:

New! Support replication

Support replication with IAM.

Validation

Improve validation of password schemes.

State field

In _scheduler/docs, set the value of the state field to crashing when the last event in the history was a crash.

_design/$DDOC/_rewrite and _design/$DDOC/_update

Disallow _design/$DDOC/_rewrite and _design/$DDOC/_update endpoints with IAM.

17 April 2018

The following changes were made in build 6895:

Pluggable storage engine

Fix a regression that is introduced with pluggable storage engine.

6 April 2018

Replaced queries parameter

The queries parameter for performing multiple view queries in a single request is no longer accepted as a URL parameter for GET /{db}/_design/{ddoc}/_view/{view} or a request body parameter for POST /{db}/_design/{ddoc}/_view/{view}. The parameter was replaced with the endpoint POST /{db}/_design/{ddoc}/_view/{view}/queries and is supplied as a queries request body parameter. You can also make multiple queries with the following new endpoints:

• POST /{db}/_all_docs/queries
• POST /{db}/_design_docs/queries

Sending several queries to a view

Sending multiple queries to a view that uses a POST request to /$DATABASE/_design/$DDOC/_view/$VIEWNAME is deprecated with multi-querying a MapReduce view. For more information, see the previous deprecation note about replacing the queries parameter.

4 April 2018

The following changes were made in build 6875:

New! Audit facility

Internal audit facility is added to the platform.

IBM Cloudant Query error messages

Improve error messages for IBM Cloudant Query.

30 March 2018

The following changes were made in build 6870:

kill command

Fix how the kill command works when you terminate an operating system process.

_changes endpoint

Fix _changes endpoint shard substitution.

Compaction resumption

Fix compaction resumption for terminated compactions.

13 March 2018

The following changes were made in build 6761:

New! _dbs_info endpoint

Introduce new _dbs_info endpoint to get information from a list of databases. See Get a list of all databases in the instance.

New! Pluggable storage engine

Add a pluggable storage engine.

Improvement

Update MochiWeb to version 2.17.

Attachments

Ensure deterministic revisions for attachments. See COUCHDB-3255.

chttpd multipart

Prevent chttpd multipart zombie processes.

Unconditional retries

Avoid unconditional retries in replicator's HTTP client.

Session support

Prepare for session support in replicator.

15 February 2018

The following changes were made in build 6656:

Query parameters

Update _design_docs to respect the query parameters that are used by _all_docs. See Get design documents.

COPY request

When you send a COPY request to /$DATABASE/docid endpoint, IBM Cloudant now decodes the Destination header and creates a new ID without escaped values.

Replication document

Remove headers from replication document on read.

update_seq and offset parameters

If the keys parameter is specified and the update_seq parameter is set to true, the update_seq and offset parameters return null in the response.

Semantics

Change semantics of status codes for create database.

7 February 2018

IBM Db2 Warehouse SaaS feature is deprecated

To find alternatives to IBM Cloudant's IBM® Db2® Warehouse as a Service feature, see the data-flow-examples repository for tutorials on extracting IBM Cloudant documents and writing the data to a IBM Db2 Warehouse SaaS table.

10 January 2018

The following changes were made in build 6620:

IBM Cloudant Query and empty partial_filter_selector field

IBM Cloudant Query falls back to selector on an empty partial_filter_selector field.

28 December 2017

The following changes were made in build 6600:

IBM Cloudant Query and $or operations

IBM Cloudant Query fields that are referenced within $or operations are considered when IBM Cloudant Query determines the usable indexes for a particular selector.

7 December 2017

The following changes were made in build 6588:

New!create_target_params parameter

A new parameter, create_target_params, was added for you to customize the target database that is created on a new replication. You can now customize the cluster's default values for the number of shards and replicas to create.

/_scheduler

A request to /_scheduler without specifying subsections docs or jobs now returns a Not found error.

new_edits value

A new error is returned when a new_edits value is invalid in the /db/_bulk_docs URL. The error is 400: Bad request.

eval() and Function() constructors

For security reasons, by default, the use of eval() and Function() constructors is disabled in JavaScript.

Prefer: return=minimal header

Added the header Prefer: return=minimal to return only essential headers. This header reduces the size of the request, which gives a performance improvement to nonbrowser clients.

Disabled JavaScript constructors

If a user calls the disabled JavaScript constructors, eval() or Function(), an error message similar to this one is returned, Call to eval() was blocked by CSP. You can fix the problem by replacing eval() calls with the calls from the expr-eval library.

4 December 2017

Removed support for virtual hosts

IBM Cloudant disabled the virtual host functionality on 4 December 2017. Support for insecure HTTP connections was replaced by HTTPS only. After you turn off HTTP support, the virtual hosts feature is no longer available since use of virtual hosts precludes secure HTTPS connections. Previous users of the virtual host feature need to make alternative arrangements to present a chosen hostname to your clients from your application and use HTTPS connections only.

7 November 2017

Incompatibility between CouchDB version 1.6 and IBM Cloudant version 2.0.0

An incompatibility exists between the most recent version of IBM Cloudant and CouchDB 1.6-based codebase. In the older version of IBM Cloudant, if you add a query parameter ("reduce=false") to the request body, the parameter in the request body is ignored. However, the parameter in the request URL is respected. In recent versions of IBM Cloudant, the query parameter ("reduce=false") in the request body isn't ignored.

17 October 2017

Query (_find endpoint) improved

IBM Cloudant Query now uses a new method to select an index. Learn more about IBM Cloudant Query index selection.

Index validation

The logic for determining whether a specific index is valid for a query that changed, addressing a bug that might lead to incorrect results.

Text indexes

Queries that use text indexes no longer fail when $exists: false is used.

Partial indexes

Partial indexes are now supported for both JSON and text indexes. For more information, see Creating a partial index to learn about the partial_filter_selector parameter.

Execution statistics

Execution statistics about a query can now be generated. These statistics are enabled by using the execution_stats=true parameter. For more information, see querying an index by using selector syntax to learn more about execution_stats=true parameter.

Pagination

Pagination is supported by using the bookmark field. Bookmarks are enabled for all index types.

use_index field invalid

_find now falls back to any valid index if the value specified in the use_index field is invalid for the current query. When find falls back, the warning field is populated in the query response.

9 October 2017

Error handling

If you rely on 500 replies for your application, you might have issues. To fix the problem, update your application to rely on 400 responses.

If you don't take care of reduce overflow errors as part of a row in the response body, issues occur. To fix this problem, change the application to handle the errors from view requests.

17 August 2017

The following changes were made in build 6365:

New! X-Frame-Options

Add the X-Frame-Options header settings. The X-Frame-Options setting is a response header that controls whether an HTTP response can be embedded in a <frame>, <iframe>, or <object>. This security feature helps prevent click jacking.

You can configure this option based on your CORS settings. If CORS is enabled, X-Frame-Options are automatically enabled and send the response header, X-Frame-Options: DENY, by default. If a request HOST header matches the URL listed in the origins section of CORS, an X-Frame-Options: ALLOW-FROM URL response header is returned.

This change might impact customers who are accessing the database directly from the browser. If you see the error message, "X-Frame-Options: DENY", and it's breaking your service, you must enable CORS by modifying the CORS configuration. After you enable CORS, add the value of the HOST header that you send in the request to the list of allowed origins.

New! Replication scheduler

Add the replication scheduler. Learn more about replication scheduler.

_revs-diff endpoint

POST requests to the _revs_diff endpoint require either the _reader or _replicator role.

24 July 2017

Retire Shared plan

IBM Cloudant Shared Plan accounts can no longer be created from the IBM Cloudant product page.

4 July 2017

The following changes were made in build 6276:

Error message

An error message changed that occurs when you try to put a document attachment with a nonexistent revision. Now, the error is a 409 error with the following information:

{"error":"not_found","reason":"missing_rev"}

26 June 2017

The following changes were made in build 6233:

IBM Cloudant Query and indexes

Fixes an IBM Cloudant Query issue where indexes that excluded potentially matching documents were selected by the query planner.

14 June 2017

Revised error message

The error message that occurs when you try to put a document attachment with a nonexistent revision. This error is changed to a 409 error with the following information:

{"error":"not_found","reason":"missing_rev"}

11 May 2017

The following changes were made in build 6069:

New! $allmatch operator support

Added support for the $allmatch operator.

Replication

Previously, a replication job that failed for some reason, which resulted in an update to the replication document, was followed by a fresh attempt to start a new replication. Under some circumstances, this behavior might continue indefinitely: many duplicates of the same error message. A fix was introduced so that the replication document is not updated unless the reason for the error changes.

13 February 2017

The following changes were made in build 5834:

Document id length

The maximum length of a document id is now 7168 characters (7k).

25 November 2016

The following changes were made in build 5728:

Malformed user documents

IBM Cloudant is more tolerant of malformed user documents that are stored within the _users database.

Structure for user documents

User documents must be structured and populated to comply with Apache CouchDB requirements.

11 October 2016

The following changes were made in build 5638:

New! Parameters

Introduces new stable and update query parameters for views.

Replicator retries

Replicator no longer retries forever if it cannot write checkpoints to the source database.

14 June 2016

The following changes were made in build 5421:

View-based filters

Changes feeds support view-based filters.

_docs_ids filter

Changes feeds support the _doc_ids filter.

POST requests

POST requests are supported for _changes.

attachments=true parameter support

Both _all_docs and _changes support the attachments=true parameter.

CouchDB 1.6 _users database support

Support for the CouchDB 1.6 _users database features, including server-side hashing of passwords when documents are created in the _users database.

/_bulk_get endpoint

/_bulk_get endpoint to reduce the number of requests that are used in replication to mobile clients.

Design document metadata

Design document metadata contains an update pending field.

Eliminate error

IBM Cloudant Query no longer returns an error if no valid index exists.

4 February 2016

dbcopy

The dbcopy feature can cause problems under some circumstances. Information about the feature was removed from the documentation. Use of dbcopy is discouraged.

6 November 2014

generate_api_key endpoint is deprecated

An earlier method of generating API keys by issuing the POST command to the https://cloudant.com/api/generate_api_key endpoint is deprecated.

1 July 2014

New! Introducing IBM Cloudant Classic

IBM® Cloudant® for IBM Cloud® is a document-oriented database as a service (DBaaS). It stores data as documents in JSON format. It is built with scalability, high availability, and durability in mind.