Release notes for 2024

November 18, 2024

Feature enhancements

• Full migration and synchronization support between Alibaba Cloud and OceanBase Cloud is now available, covering OceanBase instances on Alibaba Cloud, RDS/PolarDB MySQL instances, and self-managed MySQL/Oracle databases to OceanBase instances on OceanBase Cloud.

• Added support for executing user-defined SQL scripts on a one-time or recurring basis to address the challenges of high-duration changes and meet recurring SQL execution needs. Common scenarios include adding indexes to large tables, batch updating data in large tables, and periodic stored procedure execution.

• Alert object classification optimization: Standardized alert object types across Data Services, allowing for alert configuration management for tasks such as data migration, data lifecycle, and data import.

• Enhanced monitoring indicators for disk I/O usage across instance hosts.

• Added support for sending alert notifications through Telegram for AWS and GCP platforms.

October 21, 2024

This release introduces significant new features for analytical instances, including data development capabilities. Users can now create workspaces for analytical instances to perform data development tasks. Additionally, the new AI for Data feature debuts with SQL Copilot, which assists in automatically generating and rewriting SQL statements from natural language input, greatly improving SQL development efficiency and success rates. In terms of cross-cloud disaster recovery, OceanBase Cloud has expanded beyond primary-standby cluster instances to offer cross-cloud data migration, supporting real-time data synchronization between OceanBase instances and MySQL or Oracle databases across different clouds.

New feature

SQL Audit

• The SQL audit feature provides comprehensive tracking and detailed search capabilities for SQL execution in OceanBase databases. This feature is critical for many customers, especially for data changes, structural modifications, and security prevention. Due to regulatory and compliance requirements, the previous default of 30-day retention was insufficient for many customers who required long-term retention of SQL records for auditing purposes. The SQL Audit feature is now officially available, allowing users to choose retention periods ranging from 7 to 720 days.

New capabilities

Cross-cloud and cross-region data migration

• Supports cross-cloud migration between AWS, GCP, and Huawei Cloud on the international site, and between Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud on the domestic site. Real-time data migration between regions within the same cloud is also supported for all existing data sources.

Data archiving

• Added support for archiving data from MySQL to OceanBase MySQL instances and from self-managed OceanBase to OceanBase instances.

Data warehousing

• Introduced a new data development module, allowing users to create workspaces based on their business needs, with each workspace linked to an analytical instance. The workspace includes capabilities like worksheet management, sample dataset import, and a SQL editor. The SQL editor not only supports common SQL development and result processing but also includes AI-assisted SQL writing and query result visualization.

Incident detection and root cause analysis

• Added incident detection for scenarios like excessive tenant SQL queue wait times and high tenant CPU usage. Root cause analysis is also supported for issues such as major compaction problems, active session bottlenecks, and memory issues, helping users quickly identify and resolve problems.

Product integrations

• Added integrations with Grafana, dbt, Airflow, Glue, DataGrip, and TablePlus.

• Added integration with Datadog for the international site, allowing users to monitor Dedicated instances on OceanBase Cloud using Datadog. Datadog provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for cloud infrastructure monitoring and application performance management. The integration between Datadog and OceanBase Cloud allows users to comprehensively monitor OceanBase instances and the associated infrastructure, including performance metrics, infrastructure status, and alert events.

Usability improvements

Binlog service

• Introduced a new Binlog service management page, allowing users to manage Binlog subscriptions, throttle limits, and other configurations. Monitoring metrics such as Binlog conversion latency, RPS, sending delay, and sending RPS are also now available.

Data Migration

• Operations related to data migration tasks (e.g., task creation, pausing, resuming, and modifying timestamp) are now integrated with the console’s historical event management system.
• Added pattern-matching rules for selecting data migration objects, simplifying the selection process for batch migrations.
• Users can now modify data migration task parameters (e.g., incremental sync start timestamp, index post-processing, incremental DDL/DML settings) to customize task configurations as needed.

Monitoring enhancements

• In addition to average response time (RT) monitoring for various SQL request types in transactional instances, percentile (P90/P95/P99) RT metrics are now displayed, providing a clearer comparison of SQL performance. Similar percentile RT metrics are also available for different request types in Key-Value instances, offering more intuitive monitoring data for operations teams.

September 27, 2024

Huawei Cloud Marketplace (Overseas)

This release launches OceanBase Cloud in the Huawei Cloud Marketplace (General SaaS). Customers from Huawei Cloud’s overseas platform can now use OceanBase Cloud.

Cross-cloud primary-standby databases

OceanBase Cloud has extended its disaster recovery capability with the launch of cross-cloud primary-standby databases, building on its existing same-cloud, cross-region disaster recovery feature. This new capability currently supports cross-cloud primary-standby setups from Alibaba Cloud to AWS and Alibaba Cloud to Huawei Cloud, catering to high-availability disaster recovery scenarios across clouds and regions. This greatly enhances business continuity and disaster recovery.

SQL auditing

Users can now customize and enable SQL auditing, further enhancing the platform's security and compliance (charges apply).

Data Services

• Data Archiving: Added support for data archiving from MySQL to OceanBase MySQL instances, and from self-managed OceanBase to OceanBase instances.
• Database Changes: Supports single or periodic execution of user-created SQL scripts, addressing issues with timeouts during high-duration changes and meeting the demand for periodic execution of fixed SQL scripts. Common use cases include adding indexes to large tables, batch modifying large table data, and periodically executing stored procedures.

Usability enhancements

• Optimized Historical Events: This release supports automatically pushing operation records related to backup and restore, data archiving, data cleanup, database changes, and SQL console actions to historical events, meeting full-platform audit and security standards for traceability.

September 4, 2024

In this release, OceanBase Cloud introduces a new product type — Key-Value instances (with HBase compatibility mode and Table compatibility mode). Additionally, analytical instances are now available on GCP Marketplace, and users can purchase analytical instances on Huawei Cloud directly through the OceanBase Cloud console. Other enhancements include support for cross-cloud primary and standby databases, database proxies, and upgrades to alert management and permission management.

Significant improvements and upgrades have also been made to real-time data migration, intelligent diagnostics, and cloud service security on OceanBase Cloud. These include supporting data migration from MySQL and CloudSQL instances on GCP to OceanBase, offering one-stop support for migrating self-managed OceanBase instances to the cloud, and adding new features for capacity and usage trend analysis in instance diagnostics. This release also introduces new roles, data read/write and data services admin, offering more granular control over cloud service security.

New product type - Key-Value instances

In this release, OceanBase Cloud introduces a new product type — Key-Value instances, which support both HBase compatibility mode and Table compatibility mode. This enhances OceanBase Cloud's capabilities in NoSQL scenarios, and you can now create Key-Value instances on Huawei Cloud.

Analytical instance feature upgrades

• GCP Marketplace Launch: Analytical instances are now available on GCP Marketplace.
• Purchase on Huawei Cloud: Users can now purchase analytical instances on Huawei Cloud directly from the OceanBase Cloud console.
• Enhanced Analytical Instance Migration: Migration to analytical instances now supports configuring and automatically converting column store properties in table structures.
• Improved Alert Management: Analytical instances can now have separate alert rules, and this release introduces the ability to create alert contact groups, making alert management more user-friendly.

New data roles

This release expanded OceanBase Cloud's role model by adding new data-related roles, improving access control to enhance platform security. This release introduces two new roles: Data Read/Write and Data Services Admin. These roles control SQL window and SQL audit permissions, as well as various task operations under Data Services. In this release, the scope of instance admin roles has been separated from that of data operation and data service roles to meet different customer organization and business needs. To maintain service continuity, existing instance admins will automatically receive the newly added roles. Project admins can then add or remove roles as needed.

Cross-cloud primary-standby database disaster recovery

• This release supports creating standby instances on AWS for instances on Alibaba Cloud, enabling cross-cloud disaster recovery.
• You can now detach primary databases from standby databases when you no longer need to maintain their relationship, allowing them to function as independent instances.

New database proxy

This release introduces a new database proxy feature, simplifying access, endpoint management, and configuration for instances and their tenants.

Single-IDC deployment mode upgrade

OceanBase Cloud now supports two deployment options for single-IDC setups: three-node and two-node configurations. Depending on your use case, you can choose a deployment option that meets your needs: opt for the two-node setup for cost savings or the three-node setup for lower latency and higher computing power.

Data migration

• For the first time, OceanBase Cloud offers a one-stop data migration service for GCP, supporting data migration from Cloud SQL and self-managed MySQL instances on GCP.
• OceanBase Cloud now supports migrating self-managed OceanBase instances to the cloud and syncing cloud instances back to on-premises OceanBase instances. This feature is available on Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and overseas AWS and GCP environments.

Backup and restore

• Backup Download: OceanBase Cloud now supports downloading backup sets at both the instance and tenant levels, bridging the gap between cloud and on-premises environments.

Autonomous diagnostics

• Capacity Diagnostics: This new feature provides real-time insights into resource usage and trends for instances, tenants, databases, tables, and indexes, enabling users to quickly identify potential capacity risks and take actions such as scaling up to ensure system stability.
• SQL Diagnostics:
  • Added TopSQL diagnostics support for OceanBase Key-Value instances.
  • Introduced support for SQL templates.
  • Enhanced the display of optimization history and included operations like session killing and plan cache flushing.

Other feature optimizations

• Alert Management Optimization: Expanded platform observability by incorporating slow SQL diagnoses, performance degradation events, and database backup anomalies into alert rules, giving users greater flexibility in configuring alerts.
• Resource Tag Management: Users can now categorize, search, and aggregate cloud resources based on shared characteristics, making resource management easier.
• In-Place Scaling: Introduced in-place scaling, a faster alternative to the previous migration-based scaling method.

July 18, 2024

This release introduces new features such as cross-region standby databases, resource isolation, and data lifecycle management. It also upgrades the Events feature, launches data source capabilities, and adds integration with Informatica, Kafka, and PowerBI.

Cross-region standby databases

• Enhanced Business Security and Disaster Recovery: The OceanBase Cloud cluster instance now supports deployment across dual/multiple IDCs and zones, providing city-level disaster recovery capabilities. With the release of the cross-region standby database feature, this is further enhanced to support cross-regional disaster recovery, ensuring business continuity and stability.

Resource isolation

• Optimized Resource Allocation: By allocating independent resources to different instances, you can flexibly manage CPU resource isolation and reservation based on the users of each instance. This prevents resource contention from affecting critical business operations and optimizes overall resource utilization.
• Enhanced Isolation: Instances do not affect each other. This release includes resource isolation between tenants and within a single tenant.

Events feature upgrade

The upgrade in this release for the Events feature allows for a more comprehensive review of operations and configurations on cloud instances, tenants, databases, various tasks, and strategies (such as alert configurations).

Data lifecycle management

• Data Archiving: Supports archiving operations for OceanBase Cloud instances within the same tenant mode. It offers archiving by database and by table, with flexible variable definitions, filtering conditions, partition conditions, and target table specifications to handle complex archiving scenarios. The feature includes both proactive and reactive throttling methods to ensure the stability of the archiving process, based on source and target CPU and memory load or user-specified throttling parameters.

• Data Cleanup: Supports data cleanup operations for OceanBase Cloud instances, with options to clean up by database and by table. Like data archiving, data cleanup also provides flexible condition configurations and comprehensive throttling capabilities.

Data sources

The new data source feature supports the entry of OceanBase, MySQL, and Oracle data source information from various cloud vendors in different regions. This foundational capability is essential for modules such as data migration, data archiving, and data cleanup, allowing for the reuse of database connection configurations.

Product integrations

This release adds support for Informatica, Kafka, and PowerBI, detailing the integration methods and providing examples.

June 25, 2024

This release marks a significant upgrade to the integrated form of OceanBase Cloud services, with comprehensive enhancements in backup and restore, data import, monitoring and alerting, diagnostics, and optimization. We also introduce a new instance type - Dedicated (Analytical), offering one-stop platform support for analytical instances from data migration to development management and backup restore.

Service Launch and Listings

• New Regions: Added Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and Jakarta regions on AWS; added Singapore region on GCP.

• Support for Huawei Cloud Instances: The OceanBase Cloud console now supports purchasing Huawei Cloud instances, enhancing convenience for Huawei Cloud customers' PoC testing.

New Analytical Instances

You can now create analytical cluster instances on Huawei Cloud and AWS to meet your analytical business needs.

• Supports migration and synchronization of transactional instances of MySQL and OceanBase MySQL modes to OceanBase analytical instances.
• SQL Console capabilities are now applicable to the new analytical instances.

Upgrades to Alerting

• New alert templates and muting features, available upon contacting OceanBase technical support for allowlist access.
• Easier creation of alert rules through alert templates.
• Flexible control of unnecessary alerts through alert muting.
• New alerts for migration task exceptions and delays, enhancing comprehensive monitoring and awareness of data migration tasks, reducing fault impact.
• New alerts for Binlog service conversion delays, subscription delays, and subscription exceptions, ensuring comprehensive monitoring and awareness of Binlog service status and subscriptions.

Backup and Restore

• Supports table-level physical restore for OceanBase 4.X, providing multi-level data restore capabilities tailored to actual business scenarios.
• Supports offsite backup capabilities on AWS, Tencent Cloud, and Huawei Cloud, including cross-border and cross-region scenarios, primarily for auditing and disaster recovery needs.
• In addition to point-in-time restore, supports data restore based on specified backup sets, enhancing data restore efficiency.

Diagnostics and Autonomy

• SQL Auditing: Available on Tencent Cloud and AWS, with customizable SQL retention periods to meet auditing and tracking needs.
• Optimization Center Module: Newly released, offering analysis of SQL and schemas within the database over a specific period and providing optimization suggestions based on OceanBase Cloud diagnostics.
• Real-time SQL Diagnostics:
  • New comparison capabilities for different nodes in Top SQL diagnostics.
  • New high-risk SQL diagnostics.
  • Enhanced usability: supports monitoring and diagnostics linkage, drag-and-drop initiation of SQL diagnostics, exposure of slow SQL sample data, quick selection for common SQL issues, and extended diagnostic time range up to 15 days.
• Session Management Module: Supports aggregation of SQL records by SQL ID to efficiently locate SQL issues.

Data Migration

• Supports dynamic addition and removal of tables and databases during task execution, meeting the need to modify migration objects on the fly.
• Supports database migration to MySQL and OceanBase MySQL modes, avoiding migration failures due to non-existent target databases.
• By default, filters standby cluster instances in data migration tasks, preventing migration task interruptions caused by using standby cluster instances for migration synchronization.

Data Import

• Supports importing data files for OBOracle mode instances, including CSV and Insert SQL files; also supports sample data import.
• Extends data file import capabilities for OBMySQL mode instances, now supporting Insert SQL, Apache Parquet, and Apache ORC formats.
• Supports importing sample data up to 1 GB, with new support for GBK encoding in addition to utf8.
• Enhanced data import functionality, supporting multiple encoding formats, format validation of data files, and automatic creation of target table schemas based on data files.

Instance Configuration

• Automatic Storage Expansion: Supports setting automatic storage expansion strategies for cluster instances, enabling elastic storage capacity expansion with reduced operational costs.
• Cross-Instance Type Configuration: The instance specifications on Huawei Cloud SaaS now support reconfiguration across instances with different CPU-to-memory ratios (e.g., reconfiguring from a 16C+32G specification to a 16C+70G specification).

Upgrade to Database Account Permission Settings

Supports finer-grained permission configurations, allowing permissions to be assigned to database accounts based on specific statement levels.

Product Integration

New integration with Datadog allows monitoring of OceanBase Cloud cluster instances through Datadog.

Datadog provides a SaaS platform for cloud infrastructure monitoring and application performance management, helping enterprises monitor and optimize their technical infrastructure for high performance and reliability. The integration with OceanBase Cloud facilitates a comprehensive view of OceanBase instances and business systems' performance, infrastructure status, metrics, and alerts.

Online Help Optimization and Interactive Tutorials

The console's online help system has been upgraded with structural adjustments and enriched content, making it easier for users to navigate. Additionally, interactive demo tutorials are now available, helping users lower the learning curve for OceanBase Cloud with quicker, more intuitive, and visual usage.

April 18, 2024

In this release, OceanBase Cloud introduces a series of new features to better help facilitate users' experience of using OceanBase Cloud.

Free trial available for tenant instances of Huawei Cloud

Users can now apply for a 30-day free trial of a Huawei Cloud tenant instance (1 vCPU and 4 GiB of memory) on OceanBase Cloud, and try out various features including database management, account management, instance monitoring, SQL diagnostics, parameter management, security settings (allowlists), SQL console, data import, and Binlog service, etc.

Organization and project management

OceanBase Cloud now allows users to manage projects within organizations. Users can add or remove members within projects based on actual business needs and assign different roles to members to manage one or more projects.

Integration with various products

This release introduces a new Integrations page, featuring a curated selection of popular open-source and commercial products. These products cover multiple categories including data ingestion, SQL development, visualization, and task orchestration, etc., expanding collaboration scenarios with OceanBase Cloud. Each included product offers a quick guide on how to integrate it with OceanBase Cloud, along with detailed usage instructions, facilitating seamless operations for users, whether they are data engineers, analysts, or developers.

Data Migration enhancements

Unified migration process

OceanBase Cloud has redesigned the data migration module, providing users with a one-stop service for compatibility assessment, data migration, and performance assessment based on their usage path, facilitating smooth and efficient migration of businesses to OceanBase.

New data migration entry

The tenant section under OceanBase Cloud cluster instances now provides a shortcut entry for migrating data. Users can quickly access the data migration interface through this entry and add target information. Users can conveniently perform data migration tasks by configuring the data source.

Ability to save data sources

OceanBase Cloud now supports users to save corresponding data source connection information during the configuration of compatibility assessment, data migration, and performance assessment as needed. This meets the reuse requirements of data sources for subsequent configuration tasks and enables interoperability and sharing between compatibility assessment, data migration, and performance assessment tasks.

New SQL Console capabilities

This release introduces the capability to access SQL Console under the tenant details page. Users can manage database objects, execute SQL queries, and perform development tasks through SQL Console, streamlining their database management workflow. The features provided by SQL Console include:

1. Database Object Management: Supports creation and management of database objects, including tables, views, functions, and stored procedures, etc.
2. SQL Editing and Execution: Supports editing and execution of SQL statements for SQL development.
3. Result Set Editing and Copying: Supports editing, sorting, filtering, adding, deleting, and copying of execution results of SQL statements.

After this release, the existing Data Development module will be deprecated. If you wish to continue using features in Data Development, please visit Data Development. For documentation related to Data Development, please refer to OceanBase Developer Center Documentation.

Data Import enhancements

• Sample data import: The Data Import module now includes the ability to import sample data, supporting the import of TPC-H and TPC-DS sample datasets with sizes of 128 MB and 25 MB respectively for OceanBase Cloud MySQL instances.

• Support for cloud storage: Two new types of cloud storage are added in this release: OBS and COS. Currently, data import supports four types of cloud storage: OSS, S3, OBS, and COS.

Instance scaling capability

This release introduces the ability to scale cluster instances, supporting operations to add or remove nodes and adjust computing and storage capacity for pay-as-you-go cluster instances.