The VMware Tanzu Greenplum Platform Extension Framework for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Oracle Enterprise Linux is updated and distributed independently of Greenplum Database starting with version 5.13.0. Version 5.16.0 is the first independent release that includes an Ubuntu distribution. Version 6.3.0 is the first independent release that includes a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x distribution.

You must download and install the PXF package to obtain the most recent version of this component.

Supported Platforms

The independent PXF 6.x distribution is compatible with these operating system platform versions and Greenplum Database versions:

PXF is compatible with these Java and Hadoop component versions:

Upgrading to Version 6.x

Release 6.4.2

Release Date: September 20, 2022

Changed Features

PXF 6.4.2 includes these changes:

• Reading a JSON file containing multi-line records may be less performant due to the fix implemented for resolved issue 32353.
• Removes a string length check in the PXF extension that was added in version 6.3.2, and instead logs a message.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.4.2 resolves these issues:

Release 6.4.0

Release Date: August 19, 2022

Changed Features

PXF 6.4.0 includes these changes:

• Adds support for writing ORC primitive types and one-dimensional arrays.
• Introduces a new configuration property named pxf.orc.write.timezone.utc to govern how PXF writes ORC timestamp values to the external data store. By default, PXF writes timestamp values using the UTC time zone.
• Adds support for using a PreparedStatement when reading with the JDBC Connector, using the jdbc.read.prepared-statement property in jdbc-site.xml.
• Updates the aws-java-sdk-s3 dependency to version 1.12.261 to resolve CVE-2022-31159.
• Updates the snappy-java dependency to version 1.1.8.4.
• Updates the postgresql dependency to version 42.4.1 to resolve CVE-2022-31197.

Release 6.3.2

Release Date: July 21, 2022

Changed Features

PXF 6.3.2 includes these changes:

• Improves the error messages returned when PXF encounters UnsupportedOperationExceptions.
• Adds data buffer boundary checks to the PXF extension to guard against invalid reads.
• Updates Spring to version 2.5.12 to resolve CVE-2022-22965. For more information about this vulnerability, including impacted product suites and release lines, please refer to VMSA-2022-0010.
• Updates the bundled Log4j library to version 2.17.2 (pulled in with the Spring update to version 2.5.12).
• Updates Hadoop libraries to version 2.10.2 to resolve CVE-2021-37404.
• Updates the bundled version of the ORC library to version 1.6.13 to obtain the fix for ORC-1065.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.3.2 resolves these issues:

Release 6.3.1

Release Date: April 27, 2022

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.3.1 resolves these issues:

Release 6.3.0

Release Date: March 18, 2022

New and Changed Features

PXF 6.3.0 includes these new and changed features:

• Distributes a Broadcom Support Portal download package for Greenplum 6 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 64-bit 8.x.
• Bundles version 42.3.3 of the postgresql JDBC JAR file to mitigate CVE-2022-21724.
• Introduces support for reading the date, decimal, local-timestamp-millis, local-timestamp-micros, time-millis, time-micros, timestamp-millis, timestamp-micros, and uuid Avro logical types.
• Supports upgrading when you use gpupgrade to upgrade from Greenplum 5 to Greenplum 6. The PXF package now includes two new scripts, pxf-pre-gpupgrade and pxf-post-gpupgrade, that you use during this upgrade process.
• Supports Kerberos constrained delegation (also known as S4U2proxy) for accessing HDFS and Hive. This feature allows you to configure the PXF service principal in Microsoft Active Directory or a Red Hat IPA Server, and to direct the service to act as a delegate for obtaining Kerberos tickets from end users to the HDFS namenode service principal. With Kerberos constrained delegation, configuring the PXF service principal to be a Hadoop proxy user is no longer required to access a Kerberos-secured Hadoop cluster. This feature is deactivated by default. PXF introduces a new configuration property named pxf.service.kerberos.constrained-delegation to activate this feature.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.3.0 resolves these issues:

Release 6.2.3

Release Date: February 1, 2022

Changed Features

PXF 6.2.3 includes these changes:

• PXF bundles version 2.17.1 of the log4j2 library to mitigate CVE-2021-44832.
• PXF updates the version of go that it uses to build the pxf CLI tool to version 1.17.6 to mitigate CVE-2021-44716.
• PXF now writes early startup messages that were previously directed to stdout/stderr and ignored to the file $PXF_LOG_DIR/pxf_app.out.
• PXF introduces a performance improvement when it iterates over a list of fragments.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.2.3 resolves these issues:

Release 6.2.2

Release Date: December 22, 2021

Changed Features

PXF 6.2.2 includes these changes:

• PXF bundles version 2.17.0 of the log4j2 library to mitigate CVE-2021-45105.
• PXF downgrades the bundled version of Spring Boot to resolve issue 31927.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.2.2 resolves these issues:

Release 6.2.1

Release Date: December 17, 2021

Changed Features

PXF 6.2.1 includes these changes:

• PXF bundles version 2.16.0 of the log4j2 library to mitigate CVE-2021-44228 and CVE-2021-45046.
• PXF now returns an UnsupportedOperationException when it accesses a Hive transactional table.
• PXF now supports the SKIP_HEADER_COUNT option for external tables that specified a *:text:multi profile.
• When reading from a MySQL database, PXF now uses a jdbc.statement.fetchSize default value of -2147483648 (Integer.MIN_VALUE). This setting enables the MySQL JDBC driver to stream the results from a MySQL server, lessening the memory requirements when reading large data sets.
• The PXF Hive connector now uses the hive-site.xml hive.metastore.failure.retries property setting to identify the maximum number of times to retry a failed connection to the Hive MetaStore. The default value is one retry. Addressing Hive MetaStore Connection Errors describes when and how to configure this property.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.2.1 resolves these issues:

Release 6.2.0

Release Date: September 13, 2021

New and Changed Features

PXF 6.2.0 includes these new and changed features:

• PXF adds support for reading a JSON array into a Greenplum Database text array (TEXT[]). Refer to Working with JSON Data for additional information.
• PXF adds support for reading lists of certain ORC scalar types into a Greenplum Database array of native type. Refer to the PXF ORC data type mapping documentation for more information about the data type mapping.
• PXF bundles newer versions of ORC, Spring Boot, and other dependent libraries.

• PXF improves its message logging by:

  • Better aligning the log message text.
  • Also logging the affected fragment when it encounters a read error.
• PXF introduces a new property to the pxf-site.xml per-server configuration file. PXF uses this property, pxf.sasl.connection.retries, to specify the maximum number of times that it retries a SASL connection request to an external data source after a refused connection returns a GSS initiate failed error.
• PXF introduces a new PXF Service application property, pxf.fragmenter-cache.expiration, to specify the amount of time after which an entry expires and is removed from the fragment cache.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.2.0 resolves these issues:

Release 6.1.0

Release Date: June 24, 2021

New and Changed Features

PXF 6.1.0 includes these new and changed features:

• PXF now natively supports reading and writing Avro arrays.
• PXF adds support for reading JSON objects, such as embedded arrays, as text. The data returned by PXF is a valid JSON string that you can manipulate with the existing Greenplum Database JSON functions and operators.
• PXF improves its error reporting by displaying the exception class when there is no error message available.
• PXF introduces a new property that you can use to configure the connection timeout for data upload/write operations to an external datastore. This property is named pxf.connection.upload-timeout, and is located in the pxf-application.properties file.
• PXF now uses the pxf.connection.timeout configuration property to set the connection timeout only for read operations. If you previously set this property to specify the write timeout, you should now use pxf.connection.upload-timeout instead.
• PXF bundles a newer gp-common-go-libs supporting library along with its dependencies.

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.1.0 resolves these issues:

Release 6.0.1

Release Date: May 11, 2021

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.0.1 resolves these issues:

Release 6.0.0

Release Date: March 29, 2021

New and Changed Features

PXF 6.0.0 includes these new and changed features:

Architecture and Bundled Libraries

• PXF 6.0.0 is built on the Spring Boot framework:

  • PXF distributes a single JAR file that includes all of its dependencies.
  • PXF no longer installs and uses a standalone Tomcat server; it uses the Tomcat version 9.0.43 embedded in the PXF Spring Boot application.
• PXF bundles the postgresql-42.2.14.jar PostgreSQL driver JAR file.
• PXF library dependencies have changed with new, updated, and removed libraries.
• The PXF API has changed. If you are upgrading from PXF 5.x, you must update the PXF extension in each database in which it is registered as described in Upgrading from PXF 5.
• PXF 6 moves fragment allocation from its C extension to the PXF Service running on each segment host.
• The PXF Service now also runs on the Greenplum Database master and standby master hosts. If you used PXF 5.x to access Kerberos-secured HDFS, you must now generate principals and keytabs for the master and standby master as described in Upgrading from PXF 5.

Files, Configuration, and Commands

• PXF 6 uses the $PXF_BASE environment variable to identify its runtime configuration directory; it no longer uses $PXF_CONF for this purpose.
• By default, PXF installs its executables and runtime configuration into the same directory, $PXF_HOME, and PXF_BASE=$PXF_HOME. See About the PXF Installation and Configuration Directories for the new installation file layout.
• You can relocate the $PXF_BASE runtime configuration directory to a different directory after you install PXF by running the new pxf [cluster] prepare command as described in Relocating $PXF_BASE.
• PXF template server configuration files now reside in $PXF_HOME/templates; they were previously located in the $PXF_CONF/templates directory.
• The pxf [cluster] register command now copies only the PXF pxf.control extension file to the Greenplum Database installation. Run this command after your first installation of PXF, and/or after you upgrade your Greenplum Database installation.
• PXF 6 no longer requires initialization, and deprecates the init and reset commands. pxf [cluster] init is now equivalent to pxf [cluster] register, and pxf [cluster] reset is a no-op.

• PXF 6 includes new and changed configuration; see About the PXF Configuration Files for more information:

  • PXF 6 integrates with Apache Log4j 2; the PXF logging configuration file is now named pxf-log4j2.xml, and is in xml format.

  • PXF 6 adds a new configuration file for the PXF server application, pxf-application.properties; this file includes:

    • New properties to configure the PXF streaming thread pool.
    • New pxf.log.level property to set the PXF logging level.

    • Configuration properties moved from the PXF 5 pxf-env.sh file and renamed:

      pxf-env.sh Property Name	pxf-application.properties Property Name
      PXF_MAX_THREADS	pxf.max.threads

  • PXF 6 adds new configuration environment variables to pxf-env.sh to simplify the registration of external library dependencies:

    New Property Name	Description
    PXF_LOADER_PATH	Additional directories and JARs for PXF to class-load.
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH	Additional directories and native libraries for PXF to load.

    
    See Registering PXF Library Dependencies for more information.

  • PXF 6 deprecates the PXF_FRAGMENTER_CACHE configuration property; fragment metadata caching is no longer configurable and is now always activated.

Profiles

• PXF 6 introduces new profile names and deprecates some older profile names. The old profile names still work, but it is highly recommended to switch to using the new profile names:

  New Profile Name	Old/Deprecated Profile Name
  hive	Hive
  hive:rc	HiveRC
  hive:orc	HiveORC
  hive:orc	HiveVectorizedORC1
  hive:text	HiveText
  jdbc	Jdbc
  hbase	HBase

  ¹ To use the HiveVectorizedORC profile in PXF 6, specify the hive:orc profile name with the new VECTORIZE=true custom option.

• PXF adds support for natively reading an ORC file located in Hadoop, an object store, or a network file system. See the Hadoop ORC and Object Store ORC documentation for prerequisites and usage information.
• PXF adds support for reading and writing comma-separated value form text data located in Hadoop, an object store, or a network file system though a separate CSV profile. See the Hadoop Text and Object Store Text documentation for usage information.
• PXF supports predicate pushdown on VARCHAR data types.
• PXF supports predicate pushdown for the IN operator when you specify one of the *:parquet profiles to read a parquet file.
• PXF supports specifying a codec short name (alias) rather than the Java class name when you create a writable external table for a *:text, *:csv, or *:SequenceFile profile that includes a COMPRESSION_CODEC.

Monitoring

• PXF now supports monitoring of the PXF Service process at runtime. Refer to About PXF Service Runtime Monitoring for more information.

Logging

• PXF improves the display of error messages in the psql client, in some cases including a HINT that provides possible error resolution actions.
• When PXF is configured to auto-terminate on detection of an out of memory condition, it now logs messages to $PXF_LOGDIR/pxf-oom.log rather than catalina.out.

Removed Features

PXF version 6.0.0 removes:

• The THREAD-SAFE external table custom option (deprecated since 5.10.0).
• The PXF_USER_IMPERSONATION, PXF_PRINCIPAL, and PXF_KEYTAB configuration properties in pxf-env.sh (deprecated since 5.10.0).
• The jdbc.user.impersonation configuration property in jdbc-site.xml (deprecated since 5.10.0).
• The Hadoop profile names HdfsTextSimple, HdfsTextMulti, Avro, Json, Parquet, and SequenceWritable (deprecated since 5.0.1).

Resolved Issues

PXF 6.0.0 resolves these issues:

Deprecated Features

Deprecated features may be removed in a future major release of PXF. PXF version 6.x deprecates:

• The PXF_FRAGMENTER_CACHE configuration property (deprecated since PXF version 6.0.0).
• The pxf [cluster] init commands (deprecated since PXF version 6.0.0).
• The pxf [cluster] reset commands (deprecated since PXF version 6.0.0).
• The Hive profile names Hive, HiveText, HiveRC, HiveORC, and HiveVectorizedORC (deprecated since PXF version 6.0.0). Refer to Connectors, Data Formats, and Profiles in the PXF Hadoop documentation for the new profile names.
• The HBase profile name (now hbase) (deprecated since PXF version 6.0.0).
• The Jdbc profile name (now jdbc) (deprecated since PXF version 6.0.0).
• Specifying a COMPRESSION_CODEC using the Java class name; use the codec short name instead.

Known Issues and Limitations

PXF 6.x has these known issues and limitations: