1 SysDB Release Notes
2 =====================
4 The release notes contain noteworthy changes in each System DataBase (SysDB)
5 release, with a summary of the most important changes at the top. A complete
6 and very detailed list of changes can be obtained from the Git logs for each
7 release.
9 Compatibility Note:
10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
11 All pre 1.0 development snapshots are not considered stable yet. That is,
12 all interfaces, including the plugin API, the network protocol, or the query
13 language, may change in an incompatible way at any time. All changes are
14 documented here.
16 About SysDB:
17 ~~~~~~~~~~~~
18 “System DataBase” (SysDB) is a multi-backend system management and inventory
19 collection service. It stores system and inventory information about
20 hardware and software systems. This information is (continuously) collected
21 from various configurable backends (inventory services, monitoring services,
22 etc.) and stored in a graph-like hierarchy of generic objects. The store may
23 be queried through a generic interface independent of the active backends.
24 Object names are canonicalized before they are added to the store to ensure
25 a consistent view of your infrastructure.
27 <https://sysdb.io/>
29 Version 0.8.0, Release Date: 2016-02-25
30 ---------------------------------------
32 This release focuses on a generic and much more powerful store (query)
33 interface and modular store implementations via plugins. The in-memory store
34 has been moved into a plugin on top of that. Various fixes and improvements,
35 mostly related to iterators, have been applied to the parser and query
36 language.
38 * build system:
39 - Fix VPATH (out of tree) builds.
40 - Fixed a build issue (configure failure) when using RRDtool 1.5.
41 - Enable silent build rules by default (if supported).
42 - Fix build issues with GCC 5.
43 * parser:
44 - Add a new, standalone parser module based on a generic (public) AST
45 (abstract syntax tree). This replaces the (internal) parser of the
46 frontend module.
47 - Improved error reporting for syntactic and semantic errors by
48 propagating error messages in the parser and analyzer.
49 * core / store:
50 - Fully support array access and comparison (all element types).
51 - Service/metric parent host names are now available via the "hostname"
52 attribute (populated automatically).
53 - Rebase the store query interface on top of the new parser: store
54 implementations prepare actual queries from an AST, thus, allowing
55 multiple implementations of store readers.
56 - Querying the store (through the new interface) will emit data to an
57 arbitrary writer implementation allowing for more flexible post-
58 processing.
59 - Fixed a memory leak in the TIMESERIES implementation.
60 - data: Added support for boolean values; this is a backward incompatible
61 change which breaks the network encoding.
62 - Include nano-second fraction of datatime values (if any) in the string
63 format (including JSON query results).
64 - Add new callback type for store-readers (query plugins) based on the
65 new generic query interface.
66 - memstore: Refactor the in-memory store implementation into a separate
67 data-type. It implements the writer and query/reader APIs.
68 - The main, in-memory store is no longer enabled by default (see
69 store::memory plugin). Instead, all updates go through the plugin API
70 and are distributed to all registered writers.
71 - Handle hostname canonicalization in the generic plugin module instead
72 of requiring each writer plugin to do so.
73 - Do not canonicalize hostnames when fetching time-series.
74 - Determine an object's backends and update interval in the generic
75 plugin module and pass it on to writer plugins which are expected to
76 merge it with existing entries.
77 - Let the JSON formatter implement the writer API to make it more
78 flexible and uncouple it from the memstore module; let it support
79 arbitrary top-level objects (besides hosts).
80 - FETCH (in the core) now supports all object types and child objects as
81 well as fetching the base object without children / siblings.
82 * frontend:
83 - Added the SERVER_VERSION command; this allows clients to check for
84 supported servers.
85 - Fixed a memory leak in failed FETCH commands.
86 - Switch to the new, pluggable query interface: use registered plugins to
87 write to or query the SysDB store.
88 - Move protocol-specific (query) logic out of the core and into the
89 frontend (based on the new query API).
90 - A generic TIMESERIES implementation based on the query API replaces the
91 in-core implementation.
92 * query language:
93 - Check types of comparison operands and arithmetic expression and treat
94 mismatches as errors; previously those comparisons would fail silently.
95 - Added the 'NOT IN' operator.
96 - Support iterators (ANY/ALL) of arbitrary array expressions.
97 - Change child-object iterator syntax to 'ANY/ALL <type>.name', that is,
98 require the field name and add support for accessing arbitrary fields.
99 - Added new field "value" for attribute values.
100 - Added new field "timeseries" (boolean) for metrics indicating whether
101 a time-series store is known to SysDB.
102 - Support attribute and backend iterators in FILTER expressions.
103 - Enforce that TIMESERIES end times are greater than start times.
104 - Added unary 'IS TRUE' / 'IS FALSE' operators.
105 - Iterator expressions may now reference a chain of sibling objects as
106 long as only one such reference is an iterator. For example,
107 `LOOKUP services MATCHING ANY host.backend =~ 'foo'`.
108 * testing:
109 - Use check "loop" tests; this will run all test-cases even if there are
110 failures.
111 - Create separate binaries for each test; this allows to run more in
112 parallel.
113 - Make it possible to run unit and integration tests separately; see
114 README.
116 Stores:
117 * store::memory: Added a store-writer/store-reader plugin providing an
118 in-memory store replacing the previous, always-enabled store. It is based
119 on the 'memstore' module.
121 Version 0.7.0, Release Date: 2015-02-21
122 ---------------------------------------
124 This release introduces various features related to running SysDB as an
125 agent. Objects may now also be submitted by arbitrary applications using the
126 network protocol. Two new plugins are available to collect local facter fact
127 values and to mirror all store operations to another instance. Various fixes
128 and improvements have been applied to the client program (sysdb).
130 * build system:
131 - Added support for C++.
132 * sysdb:
133 - Fixed terminal resets on exit.
134 - Don't exit if the server closed the connection; instead reconnect
135 automatically on the next user input.
136 - Fixed string parsing: previously, quoted strings were not handled at
137 all and might have been terminated by an embedded semicolon.
138 - Also store failed commands in the history to enable history editing in
139 such cases.
140 - Improved program output: don't mix log messages with prompts after
141 sending a command; print log messages to the standard error channel.
142 - Fixed lookup of the .sysdb_history file for cases where the SysDB user
143 does not match the current operating system user.
144 * sysdbd:
145 - SSL options can be specified inside a <Listen> block.
146 - Unload all plugins on exit to ensure a clean shutdown.
147 * client:
148 - Simplified RPC handling by providing a helper function.
149 - Added support for TCP connections using SSL/TLS and supporting, both,
150 IPv4 and IPv6. Remote peer verification is required for any such
151 connection.
152 - New command line flags -K, -C, and -A to specify the SSL private key,
153 client certificate, and CA certificates file names.
154 * core:
155 - Fully support arrays of all types.
156 - Fixed (implemented) reloading of time-series fetcher plugins.
157 - Added new callback type for "store-writers", making that part of the
158 store pluggable (queries are not supported).
159 * store:
160 - Added support for querying an object's siblings.
161 - Send all stored objects to store-writer plugins in addition to storing
162 them in the in-memory store.
163 * frontend:
164 - Fixed parsing of time values.
165 - Add support for storing hosts, services, metrics, and attributes using
166 the new 'STORE' command.
167 - Fixed handling of subsequent requests on the same connection by
168 avoiding unnecessary pauses of up to one second, thus, greatly speeding
169 up request handling.
170 - Added support for TCP connections supporting, both, IPv4 and IPv6.
171 SSL/TLS is enforced for any such connection.
172 - Added support for and require actual client authentication:
173 UNIX socket connections require peer authentication.
174 TCP connections require client SSL certificate authentication.
175 * query language:
176 - Added support for expressions accessing an object's siblings by using
177 the '<object_type>.<sibling_type>' syntax.
178 * JSON format:
179 - Fixed handling of special characters which are now being escaped.
180 - Include a flag indicating whether time-series data are available for a
181 metric.
182 * utils:
183 - os: This utility module provides some Operating System related helper
184 functions: access user information (current user, homedir), manage
185 directories (create, delete, resolve), I/O helpers (select, read,
186 write), networking helpers (DNS resolution).
187 - proto: Added support for marshaling and unmarshaling messages encoding
188 a datum of any type, hosts, services, metrics, and attributes.
189 - ssl: This new module provides convenience functions for SSL/TLS
190 servers, clients, and sessions using OpenSSL.
192 Backends:
193 * facter: Added a plugin collecting local facter fact values using
194 libcfacter (C++).
196 Stores:
197 * store::network: Added a store-writer plugin sending all data to another
198 SysDB instance using the client library and low-level STORE commands.
200 Plugins:
201 * syslog: The log-level is now configurable using the "LogLevel" option.
203 Version 0.6.0, Release Date: 2014-11-17
204 ---------------------------------------
206 This release focuses on a clearer query language. The underlying
207 architecture has been refactored to allow for more powerful and generic
208 expressions.
210 * core:
211 - Added support for arrays. Elements may be of any other supported
212 data-type but only integers, decimals, and strings are fully supported.
213 * store:
214 - Refactored matchers: all matchers now operate on one or two expressions
215 or other matchers, replacing the old and less flexible conditional
216 matchers.
217 - Attribute values may now be used anywhere in an expression.
218 - On data-type mismatch when comparing attribute values, the values will
219 be cast to string (previously only done for regex matches).
220 - Added support for querying an object's backends (array of strings).
221 - Added support for iterating child objects and array values.
222 - All matchers now return false if any operand is NULL (except for IS
223 NULL).
224 - All operations now return NULL if any operand is NULL.
225 - Fixed behavior of not-operators (!=, !~) and let them not match if any
226 of the operands is NULL.
227 - Add support for looking up all object types (hosts, services, metrics).
228 - Refactored the JSON formatter to be more flexible and powerful.
229 - Record parent objects for each stored object.
230 * frontend:
231 - Added a separate parser mode for expressions.
232 - Added a new queryable field 'name' to be used in place of the rather
233 magical keyword 'host' when looking up hosts.
234 - Improved error reporting in the parser and the (newly introduced)
235 analyzer.
236 - Apply filters to hosts in the FETCH command.
237 * query language:
238 - All operators may now be used in all places if the involved data-types
239 support the respective operation. For example, regular expressions may
240 be used to match any value. Non-string values are cast to strings for
241 that purpose. IS NULL / IS NOT NULL may be applied to arbitrary
242 expressions.
243 - Introduced the 'IN' operator to check if a value or an array of values
244 is included in an array.
245 - Added support for arrays: [<elem1>,<elem2>,...]
246 - Added support for string and array concatenation using the '||'
247 operator.
248 - Attribute names have to be strings instead of identifiers now.
249 - Access object fields using '<field>' rather than '.<field>'.
250 - Let the LOOKUP and FETCH commands support services and metrics.
251 - Introduced 'FETCH service|metric <host>.<name' for fetching services
252 and metrics.
253 - Added support for 'ANY' and 'ALL' operators which apply a matcher to
254 each value emitted by an iterator (a host's services and metrics or
255 arrays). 'MATCHING ANY service|metric|attribute <cmp> <expr>' replaces
256 'MATCHING service|metric|attribute <cmp> <value>' expressions.
258 Version 0.5.0, Release Date: 2014-10-06
259 ---------------------------------------
261 This release focuses on simplifications and more flexibility in the frontend
262 and the query language. Most of those changes are not backward-compatible
263 but easy client implementations.
265 * sysdb:
266 - Include priority when printing log messages.
267 - Fixed handling of empty queries.
268 * store:
269 - When serializing the entire store (LIST command), return an array of
270 host objects (rather than wrapping it into another object).
271 - Fixed JSON format of time-series data.
272 - Fixed error checks of invalid compare expressions and reject them.
273 - Fixed lookups by back-end name.
274 - Added support for comparing attributes with different types by
275 comparing their string values.
276 * frontend:
277 - Clarified details about asynchronous messages and authentication
278 options and made client implementation more robust.
279 - Introduced a new message type encoding the JSON serialized response of
280 a query and its data type.
281 - Include the priority in log messages.
282 - Include object types in FETCH, LIST, and LOOKUP messages.
283 - Added support for including services and metrics in LIST responses and
284 skip hosts without the respective children.
285 * query language:
286 - Added support for services and metrics to LIST command.
287 - Changed syntax for attribute lookup to 'attributes[<name>]'.
288 - Changed syntax for accessing queryable fields to '.<field>'.
289 * utils:
290 - strbuf: Improved memory management.
292 Version 0.4.0, Release Date: 2014-09-01
293 ---------------------------------------
295 This release features support for metrics and transparent access to a
296 backend's time-series data. Some backward-incompatible changes were applied
297 to some query commands for more consistency.
299 * build system:
300 - Added checks for format strings and arguments.
301 - Changed configure option for collectd::unixsock to
302 --enable-collectd-unixsock.
303 * core:
304 - Added support for “metric” objects which may be assigned to a host.
305 - Introduced support for handling time-series data: added new data
306 structures describing time-series data and a new type of plugins called
307 “time-series fetchers” which are used to access time-series
308 information.
309 * store:
310 - Fixed a memory leak.
311 - Apply (very) simple optimizations to lookup expressions.
312 - Added support for metrics and their “data-stores” (describing how to
313 access the actual data referenced by a metric).
314 - Added support for querying time-series data through the newly
315 introduced “time-series fetcher” plugins.
316 * frontend:
317 - Fixed a bug that might have caused reading too much data from the
318 connection buffer in certain situations.
319 * query language:
320 - The ‘MATCHING’ clause is now optional in ‘LOOKUP’ queries.
321 - The ‘LIST’ and ‘FETCH’ commands support ‘FILTER’ clauses as well.
322 - ‘LIST’ / ‘FETCH’ were changed to ‘LIST hosts’ / ‘FETCH host’.
323 - Added the ‘TIMESERIES’ command to query arbitrary time-series which
324 fetches time-series data from a backend's data-store for a given period
325 of time.
326 - Added support for date/time values.
327 - Added support for single quotes in string values: two adjacent single
328 quotes may be used to specify a single quote.
329 * documentation:
330 - Documented the frontend protocol in frontend/proto.h.
331 - Documented changes to the query language and new / updated plugins.
332 - Documented all supported data types.
334 Backends:
335 * collectd::unixsock:
336 - The plugin now uses metrics in place of services.
337 - New config options ‘TimeseriesBackend’ and ‘TimeseriesBaseURL’ to
338 specify access to time-series, currently limited to ‘rrdtool’ and
339 ‘rrdcached’ access.
341 Plugins:
342 * timeseries::rrdtool:
343 - New plugin adding support to fetch time-series from local RRD files.
344 - Supports flushing of values in RRDCacheD.
346 Version 0.3.0, Release Date: 2014-08-01
347 ---------------------------------------
349 This release includes major enhancements and new features in the SysDB store
350 which is the core of the database. Most notably, complex expressions are now
351 supported when looking up information and filters may be used to preselect
352 the information to be returned. Some backward-incompatible changes were
353 introduced in the query language to avoid potentially confusing semantics.
355 * sysdb: Fixed non-interactive mode when using libedit.
356 * core:
357 - Fixed weird behavior when collector callbacks were registered without
358 any plugin context information (as it would, e.g., happen when using
359 LoadPlugin instead of LoadBackend in sysdbd).
360 * store:
361 - Introduced service attributes -- similar to host attributes but
362 assigned to a service object.
363 - Don't log “value too old” messages if an updated object uses the same
364 timestamp as the old object.
365 - Switched from linked-lists to AVL trees for storing all object types to
366 reduce lookup times from O(n) to O(log n).
367 - Added infrastructure for handling and evaluating arithmetic
368 expressions and filters (see also the changes to the query language
369 below).
370 - Export various fields describing base attributes of all stored object
371 types: last_update, age, interval, and backend. These fields may be
372 used when querying the store.
373 * frontend: Include new service attributes in JSON output.
374 * query language:
375 - Added support for ‘IS NULL’ attribute checks matching on non-existent
376 attributes.
377 - Changed ‘LOOKUP ... WHERE’ queries to ‘LOOKUP ... MATCHING’ to avoid
378 confusion with SQL semantics.
379 - Switched from ‘<obj>.name’ to ‘<obj>’ in MATCHING clauses, thus, no
380 longer shadowing attributes called “name”.
381 - Added support for arithmetic expressions in places that used simple
382 data values before. Arithmetic expressions support addition,
383 subtraction, multiplication, division, modulo, and concatenation
384 operations. The expressions may be based on constant values or
385 queryable fields of the stored objects (specified as ‘:last_update’,
386 ‘:age’, ‘:interval’, and ‘:backend’).
387 - Added ‘FILTER’ support to ‘LOOKUP’ queries. Filters are conditional
388 expressions which may optionally be used to limit the query and the
389 result to object (of any type) matching the filter condition.
390 - Added support to specify date and time values.
391 * utils:
392 - avltree: Added an AVL tree (self-balancing binary tree) implementation.
393 * documentation: Added documentation for the new query language features.
394 * testing: Run all unit tests through valgrind by default (if available).
396 Backends:
397 * collectd::unixsock:
398 - Added support for spaces in identifiers.
399 - Store plugin identifier (host, plugin, plugin_instance, type,
400 type_instance) as service attributes.
402 Version 0.2.0, Release Date: 2014-07-02
403 ---------------------------------------
405 This is another development snapshot of SysDB. The main focus of this
406 release is on stabilizing existing features and extending the query
407 infrastructure to support all attribute types and further operators.
409 * build system: Fixed linking of sysdbd to include *all* necessary object
410 files. This bug caused some plugins to be un-loadable.
411 * sysdbd: Fixed shutdown process in case of errors.
412 * sysdb: Fixed a bug causing some server replies to be ignored when exiting
413 from the client.
414 * core:
415 - Always log to the standard output stream if no user-provided logging
416 callbacks had been specified. Previously this was disabled after
417 enabling logging to clients in the frontend.
418 - Simplified plugin naming information and determine configuration
419 callback names automatically to ensure better consistency.
420 * store:
421 - Simplified internal data management.
422 - Store the list of backends along with each stored object which provide
423 the respective object.
424 * frontend:
425 - Simplified and improved the internal architecture matching / looking up
426 objects.
427 - Fixed parser to correctly reject invalid object types.
428 - Automatically create the base directory of a listening UNIX socket.
429 * query language: Added support for numeric constants and added operators
430 for less and greater than or equal attribute comparison.
431 * documentation: Added missing files to the distribution tarball.
433 Plugins:
434 * syslog: Don't log debug messages to syslog.
436 Version 0.1.0, Release Date: 2014-06-01
437 ---------------------------------------
439 This is the initial release of SysDB. It provides the following core
440 features:
442 * sysdb: A terminal-based, interactive client program. Supports
443 line-editing and history based on libreadline or libedit and uses an
444 asynchronous, event-driven architecture to handle user input and server
445 replies simultaneously.
446 * sysdbd: The database backend service configurable through a configuration
447 file. The daemon supports online reconfiguration.
448 * core: Flexible, multi-threaded core architecture providing a configurable
449 plugin infrastructure for querying external data-sources and extending
450 core functionality. The following plugin types are supported:
451 - data collection
452 - hostname canonicalization
453 - logging
454 * store: Central, in-memory object store managing host and service objects
455 and their attributes. Host names may be canonicalized through respective
456 plugins. Each object is automatically attributed with last update and
457 interval information using nano-seconds resolution. Attributes may have
458 various types (integer, decimal, string, date-time, binary).
459 * frontend: The frontend handling client connections uses a multi-threaded,
460 asynchronous, event-driven architecture capable of handling multiple
461 listen addresses.
462 * query language: The store may be queried using the ‘LIST’, ‘LOOKUP’, and
463 ‘FETCH’ commands returning JSON formatted objects.
464 * utils: A rich set of abstract data-types and utility functions for
465 internal use:
466 - generic channels for asynchronous, multi-threaded I/O
467 - DBI wrapper to ease common database access operations
468 - thread-aware error handling and reporting
469 - doubly linked-lists
470 - dynamic sized memory buffers supporting formatted strings and binary
471 data
472 - UNIX socket client implementation
473 * documentation: Full documentation for the tools, all plugins, and the
474 query language provided as manpages and HTML pages.
475 * testing: Unit and integration tests exist for most parts except plugins
476 covering 77% of all functions. Valgrind and Clang's address sanitzer are
477 used to detect memory leaks and programming errors.
479 The following plugins are shipped with this version of SysDB:
481 Backends:
482 * collectd::unixsock: Query collectd through its ‘unixsock’ interface
483 * mk-livestatus: Query arbitrary (monitoring) systems using the Check_MK
484 Livestatus interface.
485 * puppet::store-configs: Query Puppet through its “stored configuration”
486 database.
488 Plugins:
489 * cname::dns: Canonicalize hostnames by querying DNS information.
490 * syslog: Send log messages to the system log service.