After long months of intensive work and contributions from 46 people :pray: , we are happy to present a beta release of V8.

We actually created the first release a month ago, but then found a few issues we wanted to fix before announcing it, and here we are… This beta version should be stable enough for general usage (this is what powering the hosted service), but use at your discretion. If nothing major if found in a week we will make a final release.

Upgrading

Docker Tag for this release: redash/redash:8.0.0-beta.2.b29352.

See documentation on how to upgrade.

Please note that starting from this release we’re no longer build the tarball version of a release – only Docker images. This of course doesn’t prevent you from deploying Redash anyway you want.

Warning: You should only upgrade to V8 if your instance is currently running V7. Upgrading directly to V8 from versions earlier than V7 will not succeed. Upgrade to V7 first. See the documentation for more details.

So What’s new in V8?

Parameters

  • Parameter UI improvements:
    • Support for multi-select in dropdown (and query dropdown) parameters.
    • Support for dynamic values in date and date-range parameters.
    • Search dropdown parameter values.
    • New UX for applying parameter changes in queries and dashboards.
  • Allow using Safe Parameters in visualization embeds and public dashboards. Safe Parameters are any parameter type except for the a text parameter (dropdowns are safe).

Data Sources

  • New Data Sources: Azure Data Explorer (Kusto), Couchbase, Phoenix and Dgraph.
  • New JSON data source (and deprecated old URL data source).
  • Snowflake: update connector to latest version.
  • PostgreSQL: show only accessible tables in schema.
  • Amazon Redshift: option to set query group for adhoc/scheduled queries.
  • BigQuery:
    • Correctly handle NaN values.
    • Treat repeated fields as rrays.
    • [BigQuery] Fix: in some queries there is no mode field
  • DynamoDB:
    • Support for Unicode in queries.
    • Safe loading of schema.
  • Qubole: add support to run Quantum queries.
  • Rockset: better handling of query errors.
  • Google Sheets:
    • Support for Team Drive.
    • Friendlier error message in case of an API error and more reliable test connection.
  • MySQL:
    • Support for calling Stored Procedures and better handling of query cancellation.
    • Switch to using mysqlclient (a maintained fork of Python-MySQL).
  • MongoDB: Support serializing Decimal128 values.
  • Presto: support for passwords in connection settings.
  • Amazon Athena: allow to specify custom work group.
  • Query Results: querying a column with a dictionary or array fails
  • Clickhouse: make sure we don’t show password in error messages.
  • Enable Cassandra support by default.

Visualizations

  • Charts:
    • Allow the user to decide how to handle null values in charts.
    • Fix: legend overlapping chart on small screens.
    • Fix: Pie chart not rendering when series doesn’t exist in options.
    • Pie Chart: add option to set direction of slices.
  • WordCloud: rewritten to support new options (provide frequency in query, limits), scale when resizing, handle long words and more.
  • Pivot Table: support hiding totals.
  • Counters: apply formatting to target value.
  • Maps:
    • Ability to customize marker icon and color.
    • Customization options for Choropleth maps.
  • New Visualization: Details View.

UX

  • Replace blank screen with a loading indicator when the application is doing its first load.
  • Multiple improvements to dashboards editing: auto-save, grid markings and better refresh indicator.
  • Admin can now edit user’s groups from the user page.
  • Add keyboard shortcut (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+F) to trigger query formatting.

API

  • Query Result API response minimized to only required fields when called with a non user API key.
  • Prefer API key over cookies in authentication.
  • User can now regenerate Query API Key.

Other Changes

  • Add options for users to share anonymous usage information with us (see docs for details).
  • Sends CSP headers to prevent various kinds of security attacks via the browser. Might break unusual usages and embeds of Redash.
  • New Failed Scheduled Queries email report (can be enabled from organization settings screen).
  • Deprecated HipChat Alert Destination.
  • Add options to hide different parts of a Visualization embed UI (parameters, title, link to query).
  • Support multi-byte search for query names and descriptions (needs to be enabled in Organization settings screen).
  • CSV query results download: correctly serialize booleans and date values.
  • Dashboard filters now collect values from all widgets with the same filter.
  • Support for custom message and description in alert notifications (currently disabled behind a feature flag until we improve the alert UX).

Bug Fixes

  • Fix: adding widget to dashboard from a query page is broken.
  • Fix: default time format option was wrong.
  • Fix: when too many errors of a scheduled queries occur it causes an OverflowError.
  • Fix: when forking a query maintain the same visualizations order.

Happy Querying :nerd_face:

14 Likes

Thank you very much!

2 Likes

Multi-select parameters! Hurrah! Thanks team :smile:

1 Like

7 posts were split to a new topic: V8 Beta: Where are the preset date range options?

When will the version 8 release be made final ? We need to know about the timeline so we could deploy to version 8 when it comes .And is beta stable enough for production usage ?

Is there a guide about how to migrate to version 8 ?

@arikfr mentions how to upgrade in his post :eyes:

1 Like

If there is any news or planned ETA for the final release of 8.0 that would be helpful. If the beta is intended to be the final release, that would be fine as well. Just trying to plan out the next upgrade and how it fits into the rest of my schedule.

Thank you for your help and for the work on the release!

1 Like

same here need to plan my schedule too ! No word from team yet

Thanks!
Any procedure to manually build the tarball if needed?
Still running an old based redash instance without docker and would like to upgrade.

Also, starting from ami a docker instance but could not find a procedure on how to move to non docker to docker instance, especially regarding the db migration. Anything exists?

This is a pretty vague question since “non-docker” can mean any number of things. There are however plenty of posts on the forum of people migrating from various non-docker setups to the Docker version (Bitnami, bootstrap.sh, AMI etc).

In general the process is:

  1. Create a Docker instance of the same version that you run outside of docker
  2. Migrate from non-Docker to Docker
  3. Manually upgrade Docker through each version until you reach the version you need

So if you are running V4 today you would

  1. Create a Docker instance of V4
  2. Migrate from V4 non-Docker to V4 Docker and confirm everything works
  3. Upgrade from V4 > V5 > V6 > V7

Thanks, this part was OK.
The issue was that I’ve started from redash 2.0, using non docker mode, and using so a dedicated db (named redash, specific to non docker). I’ve found a previous post stating that specific db is no more created since running in the docker container.
I’ve reviewed my export/import script, and now this is running fine.

This is exactly right. The V8 image is tagged 8.0.0.b30340. It’s identical to the last beta so you are free to upgrade now. Or if you’re running the last beta in production you can keep it that way. Arik will post a formal announcement once the AMI’s have been updated.

Same here. Following this thread to update our Production deployment as soon as possible.

1 Like

@arikfr could you give some details to the point Customization options for Choropleth maps? Is it now possible to use other json based maps or is the change just focused on the current world map?

Thanks
Chris

You can see the relevant PR here

I’m happy Querying now
Thank you very much!