1 #####################################
2 Major Changes between 1.3.x and 1.4.x
3 -------------------------------------
4 $Id: NEWS 1958 2009-10-27 21:40:09Z oetiker $
6 RRD Caching Daemon (rrdcached)
7 ------------------------------
8 by Florian Forster and Kevin Brintnall
10 The RRD Caching Daemon can dramatically improve the 'update' performance
11 of your system. Due to file handling overheads, the time it takes todo one
12 update is virtually the same as to doing two updates in a row.
14 The Cache Daemon intercepts rrdtool update calls, assembling multiple
15 updates before writing them to the actual rrd file. When calling rrdtool
16 graph in such a setup, the command will tell the daemon to flush out all
17 pending updates for the rrd files, required to draw the graph.
19 See rrdcached documentation.
21 RRD Dumping and Restoring (rrdtool dump/restore)
22 ------------------------------------------------
23 by Tobi Oetiker
25 The output of rrdtool dump has been adjusted to be simpler to parse by
26 existing xml parsers.
28 The restore core has been completely re-written yet again and is now relying
29 on an incremental xml parser. This has the advantage that the memory
30 consumption while restoring xml files is only slightly larger than the
31 resulting rrd file. Which is much less than the requirements of the 1.3 and
32 even 1.2
34 RRD Graphing functions (rrdtool graph)
35 --------------------------------------
36 by Martin Sperl
38 * VDEF PERCENTNAN (a PRECENT that ignores NAN)
40 * CDEF PREDICT and PREDICTSIGMA functions for on-the-fly
41 data prediction without the need to modify existing rrd files as it is
42 required for HoltWinters.
44 * LibDBI integration provides a path to read data directly of a supported
45 SQL database into rrdtool graph. See rrdgraph_libdbi documentation.
47 Miscellaneous Changes
48 ---------------------
49 * graph legends can now be placed left, right or above the graph with the
50 new --legend-direction and --legend-positon placement options.
51 by Melchior Rabe
53 * switched to using automake 1.11 which provides a 'silent' build process,
54 causing errors and warnings to stand out much more than before.
55 by Tobi Oetiker
57 * switched from intltoolize to autopoint for the i18n configuration.
58 by Tobi Oetiker
60 * new graph option --grid-dash on:off to configure the dash length
61 in the grid painted over the graph by Tobi Oetiker
63 * lua bindings for rrdtool
64 by Fidelis Assis
66 * various improvements to rrd_open functions and mmap handling
67 by Daniel Pocock
69 * allow the HW smoothing window size to be set to 0 with rrdtool tune
70 by sylvain luiset
72 * new graph option --border to set the 3d border width
73 by Bernhard Reutner-Fischer
75 * draw different color swats depending on the type of line drawn in the
76 graph by Loïc Tortay
78 for more detail see the CHANGES file.
80 #####################################
81 Major Changes between 1.2.x and 1.3.x
82 -------------------------------------
84 NEW Fast file access methods (Bernhard Fischer / Tobi Oetiker)
85 ----------------------------
86 * introduced file-accessor functions rrd_read/rrd_seek/rrd_write
88 * implemented full mmap-based file access with madvise hints for
89 improved scalability, much reduced memory-footprint and much less
90 blocking while accessing the disk
92 * implemented optional full file-descriptor access instead of FILE*
93 access
95 NEW Graphing (Tobi Oetiker)
96 ------------
97 * libart has been replaced by cairo/pango
99 * pango markup is supported (--pango-markup)
101 * full grid fitting
103 * --graph-render-mode=mono for non anti aliased graphing
105 * --font-render-mode=mono for non anti aliased fonts
107 * fonts come through fontconfig, use the Pango font naming scheme
108 -> 'Times 20' ... it is not possible to use true-type fonts
109 directly anymore.
111 * Tabs are position independent.
113 * TRENDNAN filter that ignores NAN values while calculating the
114 TREND data. (Timo Stripf)
116 * --full-size-mode to specify the outer border of the image and not
117 just of the graphing canvas (Matthew Chambers)
119 * TEXTALIGN command to alter default text alignment behavior
121 * C API in-memory graphing with rrd_graph_v (Evan Miller)
123 * draw dashed lines in graphs (Thomas Gutzler)
125 * new interface graphv which returns information using the rrd_info
126 interface (Tobi Oetiker and Mark Plaksin)
128 * improved horizontal grid. Have a bit more grid lines and y-axis
129 labels while keeping them far enough apart to not run into each
130 other.
132 NEW Forecasting (Evan Miller)
133 ---------------
134 * the new MHWPREDICT consolidation function uses a variation of the
135 Holt-Winters method. It is a drop-in replacement for HWPREDICT,
136 and is better suited for data whose seasonal variations grow or
137 shrink in proportion to the average.
139 * If you create an RRD with the new MHWPREDICT function, the
140 resulting rrd file will be version 0004 and can only be used in
141 rrdtool 1.3.
143 Rewrites
144 --------
145 * rrd_restore now uses libxml for parsing which makes things much
146 more tolerant towards xml variations. The old code could mostly
147 just parse the XML as it was output by rrdtool dump. See also:
148 the note at the bottom of this document. (by Florian octo
149 Forster)
151 * rrd_update rewritten to make it more modular. Fixed two
152 longstanding HW bugs in the process (Evan Miller)
154 Internationalization (Takao Fujiwara and Tobi Oetiker)
155 --------------------
156 * The help output by rrdtool has been internationalized. There are
157 no real translations included with rrdtool yet, contributions are
158 welcome.
160 * The internationalization will only be compiled if libintl and
161 friends are available on your system. Use the configure option
162 --disable-libintl if you want to disable this feature
164 Language Bindings
165 -----------------
166 * ruby rrd_fetch will return step as a last property -- Mike Perham
168 RRDtool dump / restore incompatibility
169 --------------------------------------
170 * rrdtool dump 1.3 does emit completely legal XML. Basically this
171 means that it contains an XML header and a DOCTYPE definition.
172 Unfortunately this causes older versions of rrdtool restore to be
173 unhappy.
175 * To restore a new dump with an old rrdtool restore version, either
176 remove the XML header and the doctype by hand (both on the first
177 line of the dump) or use rrdtool dump --no-header.
180 ######################################################################################
181 Major Changes between 1.0.x and 1.2.x
182 ======================================================================================
183 Graphing
184 --------
186 * rewritten graphics generation based on libart.
187 - anti-aliased output
188 - alpha transparency support
189 - truetype fonts
191 * additional graphics formats: EPS, PDF, SVG
193 * extended multi-part documentation
195 * VDEF support; define and use variables. Find, and use, the
196 maximum rate seen by rrdtool; compute and show the average
198 * Sliding window (trend) analysis
199 Compute a smoother average, for instance over the last 6 CDPs
201 * percentile (95th or other)
202 Remove peaks, 95 percent of all rates are at or below the
203 returned value
205 Logging
206 -------
207 * a second logging interface: rrdtool updatev
208 Verbose updating of the database; show CPDs being created
210 * Aberrant Behavior Detection with Holt-Winters Forecasting
211 Compare current data with expected data, detect and log when
212 the rates are outside expected levels
214 * COMPUTE data type for artificial data-sources calculating their
215 input using RPN math and data from the other data-sources.
217 Incompatibilities
218 -----------------
219 * Colons in COMMENT arguments to rrdtool graph must be escaped with a backslash
221 * the --alt-y-mrtg option is gone or rather since 1.2.7 it is back but
222 without functionality.
224 * In pipe mode, rrdtool answers with OK only if it was successful with the
225 command. Otherwhise the answer will be ERROR...
228 Behind the Scenes
229 -----------------
230 * In order to support Holt-Winters and Calculated Datasources,
231 the rrdtool data format has changed. While the new version of rrdtool can
232 read files created with rrdtool 1.0.x. It is not possible to read files
233 created by rrdtool-1.2.x with rrdtool-1.0.x
235 * External libraries are not included with rrdtool anymore. This is in line
236 with todays trend of using shared libraries everywhere. With the exception
237 of the cgi library most things required by rrdtool will be found on every recent
238 system.
240 * Memory Mapped IO support for faster logging.