1 #####################################
2 Major Changes between 1.4.x and ...
3 -------------------------------------
4 $Id$
6 RRD Graph
7 ---------
8 * GRAD element for graph, it acts more or less like an AREA,
9 except you can specify a second color and a height which is used to
10 create a gradient from one color to the next
11 by Rian Shelley
13 * RRDcached awareness. Instead of just flushing the file, data can now
14 be pulled in from remote RRDcached instances.
16 * VDEF results do now explicitly KNOW when they have no time associated
17 and can behave appropriately. -- Jean-Edouard Babin
19 RRDcached
20 ----------
21 * New FETCH command allowing rrd_fetch to operate through the daemon and
22 thus work remotely. By Florian Forster
25 API
26 ---
27 * exported rrd_update_v_r for theadsave rrd_update calls
29 Bindings
30 --------
31 * dotnet by Chris Larsen of Euphoria Audio
34 #####################################
35 Major Changes between 1.3.x and 1.4.x
36 -------------------------------------
38 RRD Caching Daemon (rrdcached)
39 ------------------------------
40 by Florian Forster and Kevin Brintnall
42 The RRD Caching Daemon can dramatically improve the 'update' performance
43 of your system. Due to file handling overheads, the time it takes todo one
44 update is virtually the same as to doing two updates in a row.
46 The Cache Daemon intercepts rrdtool update calls, assembling multiple
47 updates before writing them to the actual rrd file. When calling rrdtool
48 graph in such a setup, the command will tell the daemon to flush out all
49 pending updates for the rrd files, required to draw the graph.
51 See rrdcached documentation.
53 RRD Dumping and Restoring (rrdtool dump/restore)
54 ------------------------------------------------
55 by Tobi Oetiker
57 The output of rrdtool dump has been adjusted to be simpler to parse by
58 existing xml parsers.
60 The restore core has been completely re-written yet again and is now relying
61 on an incremental xml parser. This has the advantage that the memory
62 consumption while restoring xml files is only slightly larger than the
63 resulting rrd file. Which is much less than the requirements of the 1.3 and
64 even 1.2
66 RRD Graphing functions (rrdtool graph)
67 --------------------------------------
68 by Martin Sperl
70 * VDEF PERCENTNAN (a PRECENT that ignores NAN)
72 * CDEF PREDICT and PREDICTSIGMA functions for on-the-fly
73 data prediction without the need to modify existing rrd files as it is
74 required for HoltWinters.
76 * LibDBI integration provides a path to read data directly of a supported
77 SQL database into rrdtool graph. See rrdgraph_libdbi documentation.
79 Miscellaneous Changes
80 ---------------------
81 * graph legends can now be placed left, right or above the graph with the
82 new --legend-direction and --legend-positon placement options.
83 by Melchior Rabe
85 * switched to using automake 1.11 which provides a 'silent' build process,
86 causing errors and warnings to stand out much more than before.
87 by Tobi Oetiker
89 * switched from intltoolize to autopoint for the i18n configuration.
90 by Tobi Oetiker
92 * new graph option --grid-dash on:off to configure the dash length
93 in the grid painted over the graph by Tobi Oetiker
95 * lua bindings for rrdtool
96 by Fidelis Assis
98 * various improvements to rrd_open functions and mmap handling
99 by Daniel Pocock
101 * allow the HW smoothing window size to be set to 0 with rrdtool tune
102 by sylvain luiset
104 * new graph option --border to set the 3d border width
105 by Bernhard Reutner-Fischer
107 * draw different color markers (enable with --dynamic-labels) depending on the
108 type of element in the graph by Loïc Tortay
110 for more detail see the CHANGES file.
112 #####################################
113 Major Changes between 1.2.x and 1.3.x
114 -------------------------------------
116 NEW Fast file access methods (Bernhard Fischer / Tobi Oetiker)
117 ----------------------------
118 * introduced file-accessor functions rrd_read/rrd_seek/rrd_write
120 * implemented full mmap-based file access with madvise hints for
121 improved scalability, much reduced memory-footprint and much less
122 blocking while accessing the disk
124 * implemented optional full file-descriptor access instead of FILE*
125 access
127 NEW Graphing (Tobi Oetiker)
128 ------------
129 * libart has been replaced by cairo/pango
131 * pango markup is supported (--pango-markup)
133 * full grid fitting
135 * --graph-render-mode=mono for non anti aliased graphing
137 * --font-render-mode=mono for non anti aliased fonts
139 * fonts come through fontconfig, use the Pango font naming scheme
140 -> 'Times 20' ... it is not possible to use true-type fonts
141 directly anymore.
143 * Tabs are position independent.
145 * TRENDNAN filter that ignores NAN values while calculating the
146 TREND data. (Timo Stripf)
148 * --full-size-mode to specify the outer border of the image and not
149 just of the graphing canvas (Matthew Chambers)
151 * TEXTALIGN command to alter default text alignment behavior
153 * C API in-memory graphing with rrd_graph_v (Evan Miller)
155 * draw dashed lines in graphs (Thomas Gutzler)
157 * new interface graphv which returns information using the rrd_info
158 interface (Tobi Oetiker and Mark Plaksin)
160 * improved horizontal grid. Have a bit more grid lines and y-axis
161 labels while keeping them far enough apart to not run into each
162 other.
164 NEW Forecasting (Evan Miller)
165 ---------------
166 * the new MHWPREDICT consolidation function uses a variation of the
167 Holt-Winters method. It is a drop-in replacement for HWPREDICT,
168 and is better suited for data whose seasonal variations grow or
169 shrink in proportion to the average.
171 * If you create an RRD with the new MHWPREDICT function, the
172 resulting rrd file will be version 0004 and can only be used in
173 rrdtool 1.3.
175 Rewrites
176 --------
177 * rrd_restore now uses libxml for parsing which makes things much
178 more tolerant towards xml variations. The old code could mostly
179 just parse the XML as it was output by rrdtool dump. See also:
180 the note at the bottom of this document. (by Florian octo
181 Forster)
183 * rrd_update rewritten to make it more modular. Fixed two
184 longstanding HW bugs in the process (Evan Miller)
186 Internationalization (Takao Fujiwara and Tobi Oetiker)
187 --------------------
188 * The help output by rrdtool has been internationalized. There are
189 no real translations included with rrdtool yet, contributions are
190 welcome.
192 * The internationalization will only be compiled if libintl and
193 friends are available on your system. Use the configure option
194 --disable-libintl if you want to disable this feature
196 Language Bindings
197 -----------------
198 * ruby rrd_fetch will return step as a last property -- Mike Perham
200 RRDtool dump / restore incompatibility
201 --------------------------------------
202 * rrdtool dump 1.3 does emit completely legal XML. Basically this
203 means that it contains an XML header and a DOCTYPE definition.
204 Unfortunately this causes older versions of rrdtool restore to be
205 unhappy.
207 * To restore a new dump with an old rrdtool restore version, either
208 remove the XML header and the doctype by hand (both on the first
209 line of the dump) or use rrdtool dump --no-header.
212 ######################################################################################
213 Major Changes between 1.0.x and 1.2.x
214 ======================================================================================
215 Graphing
216 --------
218 * rewritten graphics generation based on libart.
219 - anti-aliased output
220 - alpha transparency support
221 - truetype fonts
223 * additional graphics formats: EPS, PDF, SVG
225 * extended multi-part documentation
227 * VDEF support; define and use variables. Find, and use, the
228 maximum rate seen by rrdtool; compute and show the average
230 * Sliding window (trend) analysis
231 Compute a smoother average, for instance over the last 6 CDPs
233 * percentile (95th or other)
234 Remove peaks, 95 percent of all rates are at or below the
235 returned value
237 Logging
238 -------
239 * a second logging interface: rrdtool updatev
240 Verbose updating of the database; show CPDs being created
242 * Aberrant Behavior Detection with Holt-Winters Forecasting
243 Compare current data with expected data, detect and log when
244 the rates are outside expected levels
246 * COMPUTE data type for artificial data-sources calculating their
247 input using RPN math and data from the other data-sources.
249 Incompatibilities
250 -----------------
251 * Colons in COMMENT arguments to rrdtool graph must be escaped with a backslash
253 * the --alt-y-mrtg option is gone or rather since 1.2.7 it is back but
254 without functionality.
256 * In pipe mode, rrdtool answers with OK only if it was successful with the
257 command. Otherwhise the answer will be ERROR...
260 Behind the Scenes
261 -----------------
262 * In order to support Holt-Winters and Calculated Datasources,
263 the rrdtool data format has changed. While the new version of rrdtool can
264 read files created with rrdtool 1.0.x. It is not possible to read files
265 created by rrdtool-1.2.x with rrdtool-1.0.x
267 * External libraries are not included with rrdtool anymore. This is in line
268 with todays trend of using shared libraries everywhere. With the exception
269 of the cgi library most things required by rrdtool will be found on every recent
270 system.
272 * Memory Mapped IO support for faster logging.