We’re excited to announce the release of RisingWave v2.3, bringing even more power and flexibility to your stream processing workflows. This release introduces the Iceberg table engine for columnar-based data storage, elastic disk cache, workload isolation, async and batched JavaScript UDF, and much more.
Follow along to learn more about some of the standout features in this version release. If you are interested in the full list of v2.3 updates, see the full release note.
Iceberg table engine for columnar-based data storage
RisingWave supports two types of storage: the default row-based internal storage and a columnar storage engine powered by Apache Iceberg. With the Iceberg table engine, you can create and manage tables natively within RisingWave, while storing the data externally in the Iceberg format. This approach offers several benefits, including built-in table management, columnar storage with Iceberg, streamlined data pipelines, and improved compatibility with other systems.
We provide a detailed guide on using the Iceberg table engine, covering how to configure and use it effectively. For a broader understanding of Iceberg’s capabilities and how it fits into the RisingWave ecosystem, visit the Iceberg Overview. For general information on data storage options, see the Storage Overview.
S3 Tables integration for Iceberg sources, sinks & table engine
Connect RisingWave directly to Amazon S3 Tables, now usable as a managed Iceberg catalog via its compatible REST API. Configure RisingWave's Iceberg source to read from tables managed by S3 Tables, use the Iceberg sink to write to them, or leverage the Iceberg table engine with S3 Tables as its catalog. A key advantage is utilizing S3 Tables' automatic data compaction for simplified maintenance and optimized storage. This offers a powerful, managed catalog option for your Iceberg workflows within AWS.
Learn more about configuring this integration in the Overview and specific feature docs.
Elastic disk cache
Facing high S3 costs and latency when data exceeds memory cache? New in v2.3, Elastic Disk Cache adds a local disk caching tier between memory and S3. This significantly cuts expensive S3 reads (up to 90% cost reduction observed), boosts performance for large-state streaming tasks, and accelerates scaling and recovery.
This is a Premium Edition feature. More details in Elastic disk cache.
Workload isolation and interaction
Previously, a failure in one database could impact others within the same RisingWave cluster.
RisingWave v2.3 introduced a comprehensive suite of workload isolation and interaction features to address these challenges, enabling robust workload isolation and flexible interaction:
Database isolation: Core improvements providing inherent resilience between databases by default.
Resource groups: Assign databases to dedicated pools of compute nodes for strong fault isolation, performance tuning, and resource governance.
Cross-database queries: Query tables and materialized views across different databases, enabling unified analytics without data duplication, especially powerful when combined with isolated environments.
Both database isolation and resource groups require Premium Edition. They are automatically enabled on RisingWave Cloud. For self-hosted deployments, you can try out any Premium Edition feature without license for clusters with a compute capacity up to 4 cores.
Learn more in Workload isolation and interaction and stay tuned for a detailed blog post.
Async and batched JavaScript UDF
Starting from v2.3, RisingWave introduces asynchronous and batched JavaScript user-defined functions (UDFs) to perform asynchronous operations and handle multiple inputs at once, which is ideal for I/O-bound tasks, external API calls, and more.
To achieve this, define a JavaScript UDF with the extended CREATE FUNCTION syntax, using the optional async and batch settings in the WITH clause.
For details, see Async and batched JavaScript UDFs.
Enhanced ASOF join for batch query
RisingWave introduces ASOF JOIN support for batch queries in v2.3, following its support for streaming queries in v2.1. Note that in batch mode, if multiple rows in the right table match the nearest value, the result may vary across executions.
For more information, see ASOF joins.
Conclusion
These are some of the highlight features included in v2.3. To see the entire list of updates, which includes updates to source and sink connectors, please refer to the full release note.
Stay tuned for next month’s updates as we continue to enhance RisingWave with new features. Visit the RisingWave GitHub repository to explore the latest developments and planned releases.
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