Databricks SQL release notes

This article lists new Databricks SQL features and improvements, along with known issues and FAQs.

Release process

Databricks releases updates to the Databricks SQL web application user interface on an ongoing basis, with all users getting the same updates rolled out over a short period of time.

In addition, Databricks typically releases new SQL warehouse compute versions regularly. Two channels are always available: Preview and Current.

Note

Releases are staged. Your Databricks account might not be updated with a new SQL warehouse version or Databricks SQL feature until a week or more after the initial release date.

Channels

Channels let you choose between the Current SQL warehouse compute version or the Preview version. Preview versions let you try out functionality before it becomes the Databricks SQL standard. Take advantage of preview versions to test your production queries and dashboards against upcoming changes.

Typically, a preview version is promoted to the current channel approximately two weeks after being released to the preview channel. Some features, such as security features, maintenance updates, and bug fixes, may be released directly to the current channel. From time to time, Databricks may promote a preview version to the current channel on a different schedule. Each new version will be announced in the following sections.

To learn how to switch an existing SQL warehouse to the preview channel, see Preview Channels. The features listed in the user interface updates sections are independent of the SQL Warehouse compute versions described in the Channels section of the release notes.

Available Databricks SQL versions

Current channel: Databricks SQL version 2024.15

Preview channel: Databricks SQL version 2024.15

See features and updates in Databricks SQL version 2024.15.

April 23, 2024

UI changes:

• For all Share dialogs in the UI, the All Users group has been renamed to All Workspace Users. The new name more accurately reflects the scope of the group, which has always included users assigned to the workspace. No change is made to group membership as part of this rename.

Visualization updates:

• Custom tooltop formats now function correctly for multi-axis charts.

• The New charts preview tag is removed when users have not changed the toggle in the past 14 days.

April 18, 2024

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL warehouse compute versions described above.

Improvements:

• The tooltips on stacked charts now display the stack value and percentage by default.

• The tooltips for multi-axis charts now highlight the hovered item.

• Table visualizations for Databricks SQL now adapt a new query result’s data type when edited in the SQL editor.

• The Catalog Explorer’s Query History table shows a tree-like view for Query Source attribution. You can use this to see which entities have triggered the query statement to run.

April 11, 2024

Serverless SQL warehouses are now in Public Preview.

Using the Databricks serverless architecture, a serverless SQL warehouse supports all of the performance features of Databricks SQL. With a serverless SQL warehouse and its performance features, you get:

• Rapid startup time (typically between 2 and 6 seconds).

• Rapid upscaling to acquire more compute when needed for maintaining low latency.

• Query admittance closer to the hardware’s limitation rather than the virtual machine.

• Quick downscaling to minimize costs when demand is low, providing consistent performance with optimized costs and resources.

See Enable serverless SQL warehouses.

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL warehouse compute versions described above.

Improvements:

• You can now group by percentage when creating visualizations in Databricks SQL and notebooks.

• For new charts (in Public Preview), you can zoom in along a single axis by clicking and dragging in a straight line parallel to the axis.

• The Unity Catalog shared cluster Allowlist UI is now generally available. You can access it on the Metastore details page in Catalog Explorer. See How to add items to the allowlist.

• Forms to create and edit external locations now open as a full page. They include the option to include a storage credential.

Fixes:

• Corrected an issue for Histogram charts where negative values were erroneously marked as positive.

April 4, 2024

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL warehouse compute versions described above.

Improvements:

• Switching visualizations between heat maps and other chart types now preserves the relevant fields better.

Fixes:

• Bar charts with color encodings now correctly restrict adding multiple Y-axis fields.

• Resolved an issue where the Download as PNG button was missing from some visualizations.

• Corrected formatting for negative big integers previously missing thousands of separators.

• Fixed incorrect hover line placement when hovering over labels on line charts.

March 28, 2024

Databricks SQL version 2024.15 available

Rollout Schedule

• Preview rollout for 2024.15: Between February 14th and March 4th

• Current rollout for 2024.15: Between March 25th and April 8th

Changes in 2024.15

Delta updates

• Delta UniForm is now generally available: UniForm is now generally available and uses the IcebergCompatV2 table feature. You can now enable or upgrade UniForm on existing tables. See Universal Format (UniForm) for Iceberg compatibility with Delta tables.

• Recompute data skipping statistics for Delta tables: You can now recompute statistics stored in the Delta log after changing columns used for data skipping. See Specify Delta statistics columns.

SQL language updates

• Declare temporary variables in a SQL session: This release introduces the ability to declare temporary variables in a session that can be set and then referred to from in queries. See Variables.

• Native XML file format support (Public Preview): Native XML file format support is now in Public Preview. XML file format support enables ingestion, querying, and parsing of XML data for batch processing or streaming. It can automatically infer and evolve schema and data types, supports SQL expressions like from_xml, and can generate XML documents. It doesn’t require external jars and works seamlessly with Auto Loader, read_files, COPY INTO, and Delta Live Tables. See Read and write XML files.

Apache Spark SQL updates

Databricks SQL 2024.15 include Apache Spark 3.5.0. Additional bug fixes and improvements for SQL are listed on the Databricks Runtime 14.3 release note. See Apache Spark and look for the [SQL] tag for a complete list.

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL warehouse compute versions described above.

• A new overview tab in the entity page of Catalog Explorer shows important metadata like filesize, data source, owner, table schema, and comments.

• Switching visualizations between heatmaps and other chart types now better preserves the relevant fields.

• Bar charts with color encodings now correctly restrict adding multiple Y-axis fields.

March 21, 2024

• Unity Catalog model lineage is now in Public Preview.

The table view in Catalog Explorer now has an Overview tab to describe its primary metadata.

March 14, 2024

• New charts now apply aliases and custom colors for null values in numeric columns.

• New charts now render tick marks to show the top of the y-axis.

March 7, 2024

• Fixed an issue where tooltips in charts with over 100 series incorrectly showed all series. Now, only the focused series is shown.

• Reduced typing latency in the SQL editor by 30% through performance optimizations.

• When managing queries in the SQL editor, moving a query to trash automatically closes the tab.

• Fixed an issue in the SQL editor where text was accidentally selected when adjusting the side panel width.

February 29, 2024

• The schema browser in Catalog Explorer now displays column primary and foreign key constraints.

• The retention time shown in the Lineage tab in Catalog Explorer has been increased to one year.

• Tooltips on new charts in notebooks are now always rendered inside the visualization boundary.

Feburary 22, 2024

• Improvements to the Sample Data tab in the Catalog Explorer table view enable you to sort columns, Copy selected data to your clipboard, and view line numbers. It can now better display special values, like JSON objects, dates, numeric and null values.

February 15, 2024

• The documentation for code-based query filters, such as SELECT action AS 'action::filter', has been removed. Databricks recommends updating queries to remove this pattern.

February 8, 2024

• You can now request access when opening a link to a Lakeview dashboard you do not have permissions on.

• Lakeview dashboard filters now have explicit All and None options. Authors can choose to hide the All option in single select filters.

• You can now set minimum and maximum values for axes on Lakeview dashboard charts.

February 1, 2024

Databricks SQL Version 2024.10 Available

Rollout Schedule

• Preview rollout for 2024.10: Between Jan 30, 2024 and Feb 5, 2024

• Current rollout for 2024.10: Between Feb 13, 2023 and Feb 20, 2024

Changes in 2024.10

• Fixed corrupt file handling in DML commands: The DML commands DELETE, UPDATE, and MERGE INTO no longer respect the read options ignoreCorruptFiles and ignoreMissingFiles. When encountering an unreadable file in a table, these commands now fail even if these options are specified.

• Row-level concurrency is Generally Available and on by default: Row-level concurrency reduces conflicts between concurrent write operations by detecting changes at the row-level. Row-level concurrency is only supported on tables without partitioning, which includes tables with liquid clustering. Row-level concurrency is enabled by default on Delta tables with deletion vectors enabled. See Write conflicts with row-level concurrency.

• Shallow clone for Unity Catalog external tables (Public Preview): You can now use shallow clone with Unity Catalog external tables. See Shallow clone for Unity Catalog tables.

• Faster multi-threaded statistics collection: Statistics collection is up to 10 times faster on small clusters when running CONVERT TO DELTA or cloning from Iceberg and Parquet tables. See Convert to Delta Lake and Incrementally clone Parquet and Iceberg tables to Delta Lake.

• Pushdown filters in the DeltaSource on Delta files: For better utilization, partition filters on Delta tables streaming queries are now pushed down to Delta before rate limiting.

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL Warehouse compute versions described above.

• The Admin view tab on listing pages for Databricks SQL objects (queries, dashboards, and alerts) has been removed. Workspace admin users can view all objects from their respective listing pages. See Access and manage saved queries, Databricks SQL dashboards, and What are Databricks SQL alerts?.

• The query history page displays queries from the past 24 hours by default. See Query history.

January 18, 2024

• Fixed a rendering issue for visualizations where bar charts showing a single date on the x-axis resulted in a very thin bar. New chart visualizations render as expected.

January 11, 2024

• Databricks SQL Queries and Dashboard APIs support changing the Run as role setting programatically.

January 4, 2024

• Introduced primary key and foreign key entity relationship diagrams in Catalog Explorer. See View the Entity Relationship Diagram.

December 21, 2023

• For new charts, heatmap-type charts respect the reverseY setting.

• Fixed a rendering performance issue for notebooks with a large number of visualizations.

December 7, 2023

User interface updates

• Corrected visualization formatting issue where large integer values were mistakenly displayed as floats.

• Fixed an issue with Databricks SQL dashboards where expanded chart views were sometimes showing blank charts.

• Bar charts with quantitative fields on both X and Y axes render more legible data labels.

• Fixed issue in the SQL Editor so that tables with the word stream in the title no longer conflict with the reserved keyword. These tables now appear as expected in the schema browser and are not error-highlighted.

• The query history page now supports column resize and column selections.

• The query history page supports two new columns: Query source and Query source type.

• BI options, like Tableau and Power BI, are easier to find in Catalog Explorer on eligible pages.

November 30, 2023

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL Warehouse compute versions described above.

• Improved dark mode compatibility for labels in new charts.

• New charts now consistently prioritize label display inside bars.

• Fixed a bug where some right-click menu actions weren’t working in the SQL Editor.

November 16, 2023

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL Warehouse compute versions described above.

• Databricks SQL queries, alerts, and dashboards have a new scheduler and scheduling interface.

November 9, 2023

Changes in 2023.50:

Highlights:

• You can now use named parameter invocation on SQL and Python UDF.

SQL Language updates: The following builtin functions have been added: - `from_xml`: Parses an XML STRING into a STRUCT. - `schema_of_xml`: Derives a schema from an XML STRING. - `session_user`: Returns the logged-in user. - `try_reflect`: Returns NULL instead of the exception if a Java method fails.

The following builtin functions have been enhanced:

• function invocation. Table arguments to functions support partitioning and ordering: You can now use PARTITION BY and ORDER BY clauses to control how table arguments are passed to a function.

• `mode`: Support for an optional parameter forcing a deterministic result.

• `to_char`: New support for DATE, TIMESTAMP, and BINARY.

• `to_varchar`: New support for DATE, TIMESTAMP, and BINARY.

• `array_insert()` is 1-based for negative indexes: The array_insert function is 1-based for both positive and negative indexes. It now inserts a new element at the end of input arrays for the index -1.

User interface updates

The features listed in this section are independent of the SQL warehouse compute versions described above.

Visualizations:

• Tooltips for new charts show only hovered items for high-cardinality charts.

• New charts automatically align dual-axis charts at zero.

• Charts changed rotated label and axis text angle direction from -90 to 90 degrees.

• Charts now use the label’s width to decide rotation.

SQL Editor: Autocomplete is now less aggressive and dismisses automatically at the end of statements

November 2, 2023

October 26, 2023

Changes in Databricks SQL version 2023.45

Highlights:

• Predictive I/O for updates is now generally available. See What is predictive I/O?

• Deletion vectors are now generally available. See What are deletion vectors?

Query optimizations:

• Removed the outer join if they are all distinct aggregate functions. SPARK-42583

• Optimized the order of filtering predicates. SPARK-40045

SQL function updates:

• Added support for implicit lateral column alias resolution on Aggregate. SPARK-41631

• Support for implicit lateral column alias in queries with Window. SPARK-42217

• Support for for Datasketches HLLSketch. See hll_sketch_agg aggregate function.

• Added the try_aes_decrypt() function. See try_aes_decrypt function.

• Support for CBC mode for aes_encrypt() and aes_decrypt(). See aes_decrypt function.

• Add 3-args function aliases DATE_ADD and DATE_DIFF.

• Added support for aes_encrypt IVs and AAD. SPARK-43290

• Implement bitmap functions. SPARK-44154

• Added the to_varchar alias for to_char. See to_varchar function.

• Added array_compact support. See array_compact function.

• Support for udf luhn_check. See luhn_check function.

• Added analyzer support of named arguments for built-in functions. SPARK-44059

• Support for TABLE argument parser rule for TableValuedFunction. SPARK-44200

• array_insert now fails with 0 index. SPARK-43011

• Added NULL values for INSERT with user-specified lists of fewer columns than the target table. SPARK-42521

• DECODE function returns wrong results when passed NULL. SPARK-41668

User interface updates

Improvements:

• Periods in data field names no longer result in blank charts.

• The legacy schema browser now works with Unity Catalog.

• Implemented performance improvements to load only the active tab in the SQL Editor, decreasing initial load time by up to 20%.

• AI-generated table comments in Catalog Explorer are now generally available.

Fixes:

• Bars on temporal bar charts are now centered over the date tick mark.

• Data label templates with aggregate expressions now use the proper numeric formatters.

• Zooming on new charts now works with a scale set to categorical using temporal data.

October 19, 2023

Improvements:

• Drag and drop in schema browser is now available.

Fixes:

• Legend selection tooltip instructions specify Mac users use cmd and Windows users use ctrl.

• Charts with truncated data display consistent colors as seen in the editor.

October 12, 2023

Improvements:

• New charts support @@name data labels on scatter plots.

• Customized percentage formats apply to grouped chart tooltips in new charts.

• Workspace binding extension UI is GA.

• Lineage is GA.

Fixes:

• Improved label rendering on new charts to prevent labels from spilling outside chart boundaries.

• Increased the contrast of tick and grid lines on new charts for improved visibility.

• Increased the axis label spacing to improve readability on new charts.

October 5, 2023

Improvements:

• Hovering over a series in a chart now dims the surrounding series in the tooltip to improve readability in new charts.

• New charts using percentage values now display tooltips with absolute values.

• Added autocomplete support for creating volumes.

• Closing a non-active tab no longer switches tabs.

• Selected run clearly indicates when highlighting text.

Fixes:

• Improved error message wording in Pivot Tables when the data is truncated.

• Fixed a rendering error in Pivot Tables where colors were not showing when using BigInt data types.

• When downloading PNGs in new charts with numerous legend items, removed the color symbol for overflow legend entries.

• Lines in new charts will maintain a consistent thickness even at the topmost view boundary.

• Delta Live Tables are properly detected by the SQL Parser and won’t show-up as invalid tables in Schema Browser.

• Tooltips was added to sidebar.

September 28, 2023

Improvements:

• Delta tables history improvement in Catalog Explorer includes adding filters for date range, user, and operation type, as well as sortable columns, and inline links to associated Jobs and Notebooks.

• Dark mode support added across legends, tooltips and table visualization.

September 21, 2023

Improvements:

• Pivot Table rendering performance has been improved.

• New DuBois pattern for lineage tabular views in the UI.

September 14, 2023

Improvement:

• File names are now preserved when downloading PNGs in new chart visualizations. See New chart visualizations in Databricks.

September 7, 2023

Databricks SQL version 2023.40 available

Rollout schedule

• Preview rollout for 2023.40: Between Sep 5, 2023 and Sep 11, 2023

• Current rollout for 2023.40: Between Sep 18, 2023 and Sep 25, 2023

Changes in 2023.40:

• Tags are now available with Unity Catalog.

• Databricks Runtime returns an error if a file is modified between query planning and invocation.

• Databricks ODBC/JDBC driver support.

• Enable time series column labeling.

• New bitmap SQL functions.

• Improved encryption functions.

• Unity Catalog support for REFRESH FOREIGN.

• INSERT BY NAME is now supported.

• Share materialized views with Delta Sharing.

User interface updates

Improvements:

• New charts are now available, featuring faster render performance, beautiful colors, and improved interactivity. See New chart visualizations in Databricks.

• In the graph view of Query Profile, you can now view the Join type on any node containing a join in the query plan.

• Data Explorer is renamed to Catalog Explorer to recognize the fact that you can use it to work with all securable objects in Unity Catalog, not just data objects. See What is Catalog Explorer?.

August 31, 2023

New feature:

• Tagging for Unity Catalog is in Public Preview. You can use tags to simplify search and discovery of your data assets. See Apply tags.

August 24, 2023

Improvement:

• Autocomplete stops suggesting recommendations after you press the spacebar.

• Schema Browser no longer sees live Delta Live Tables as broken tables.

August 16, 2023

Improvement:

• The Catalog dropdown in the SQL editor now closes when you switch tabs. Previously, when you switched tabs, the dropdown would remain open.

August 10, 2023

Improvement:

• Autocomplete now supports the new syntax for setting Unity Catalog tags. For information on commands, see SQL language reference.

August 3, 2023

Improvements:

• The underlying Monaco Editor now uses version 37.1.

• Autocomplete support for SHOW ARCHIVED FILES FOR Delta commands.

July 27, 2023

Improvements:

• The SQL editor is now compatible with Windows newline characters, ensuring that query formatting works as expected in all cases.

• You can open the query profile navigation from notebook results. For queries, run your query with SQL warehouse.

July 20, 2023

Databricks SQL version 2023.35 available

Rollout schedule

• Preview rollout for 2023.35: Between Jul 18, 2023 and Jul 24, 2023

• Current rollout for 2023.35: Between Jul 31, 2023 and Aug 8, 2023

Changes in 2023.35:

• Enhanced reliability for VACUUM with shallow clone in Unity Catalog.

• Support for Python UDFs in SQL.

• Delta Lake UniForm for Iceberg is in Public Preview.

• Delta Lake liquid clustering is in Public Preview.

• Archival support for Delta Lake.

• IDENTIFIER clause support.

• Unity Catalog support for Python and Pandas User-Defined Functions (UDFs).

Improvement:

• Table popularity in Catalog Explorer is available to all Unity Catalog users.

July 13, 2023

Improvement:

• Unity Catalog users can now view additional table insights in Catalog Explorer such as frequently joined tables, frequent users of a given table, and frequently used notebooks and dashboards.

June 22, 2023

Public Preview:

• Databricks SQL now supports large language models (LLMs) hosted on model serving endpoints. Call ai_query() to access your LLM. This function is only available in Public Preview on Databricks SQL Pro and Serverless. To participate in Public Preview, submit the AI Functions Public Preview enrollment form.

June 15, 2023

New feature:

• SQL tasks in Workflows are now generally available. You can orchestrate Queries, Dashboards, and Alerts from the Workflows page. See Task type options.

• A new schema browser is now in Public Preview, featuring an updated UX, a For You tab, and improved filters. The schema browser is available in Databricks SQL, Catalog Explorer, and notebooks. See Browse data.

June 8, 2023

DBSQL version 2023.30 available

Changes in 2023.30

• New SQL built-in functions, such as array_prepend(array, elem), try_aes_decrypt(expr, key [, mode [, padding]]), and sql_keywords() .

• You can now use shallow clone to create new Unity Catalog managed tables from existing Unity Catalog managed tables. See Shallow clone for Unity Catalog tables.

• You can now use CLONE and CONVERT TO DELTA with Iceberg tables that have partitions defined on truncated columns of types int, long, and string. Truncated columns of type decimal are not supported.

• START VERSION is now deprecated for ALTER SHARE.

User interface updates

Fix:

• Counter visualization now supports formatting when using Big Integers.

June 1, 2023

Improvements:

• Binary data will now render as a hex string when using the Arrow format.

• In the SQL Statement API, the CSV format is now supported for the EXTERNAL_LINKS disposition. This allows clients to extract up to 100 GiB of data in CSV format with pre-signed URLs, whereas the INLINE limit for JSON is 16 MiB.

• Databricks SQL Pro is available in all regions. SQL Pro is now the default warehouse in the UI. The API default is still Classic.

May 29, 2023

New feature:

• You can now use the add data UI to load data from a cloud object storage path that’s defined as a Unity Catalog external location. For more information, see Load data using a Unity Catalog external location.

May 25, 2023

Improvements:

• You can now toggle the autocompletion result panel.

• Disable the enter key so it no longer accepts autocomplete suggestions. Under DBSQL User Settings, click Editor Settings, then New Editor settings. Turn off *Enter key accepts autocomplete suggestions*.

Fixes:

• Sorted table headers now have colors.

• Chart lines now render correctly.

May 18, 2023

Improvement:

• In the SQL Statement API, the EXTERNAL_LINKS disposition now supports the JSON_ARRAY format. You can extract up to 100 GiB of data in JSON format with pre-signed URLs. The INLINE limit for JSON is 16 MiB.

May 11, 2023

New feature:

• Schema Browser is now generally available in Catalog Explorer.

Improvements:

• On-hover table detail panel showing is less sensitive.

• The escape key now closes the autocomplete panel.

• View definitions now have syntax highlighting in the Catalog Explorer details tab.

Fixes:

• Pivot tables now correctly render on Windows devices.

• Completion suggestions now properly follows the case of the first keyword.

May 4, 2023

Databricks SQL Version 2023.26 Available

Rollout Schedule

• Preview rollout for 2023.26: Between April 19, 2023 and April 25, 2023

• Current rollout for 2023.26: Between May 3, 2023 and May 10, 2023

Changes in 2023.26

• Photon returns an error if a file is modified between query planning and execution.

• New features and extended support for Predictive I/O features. See Databricks Runtime 13.0 (unsupported).

• Use the Databricks connector to connect to another Databricks workspace.

• CREATE TABLE LIKE feature for Delta tables.

• New metadata column fields denoting file block start and length.

• New H3 geospatial functions. See H3 geospatial functions.

• New SQL built-in functions. See Databricks Runtime 13.0 (unsupported).

User interface updates

Improvements:

• Administrators can change warehouse owners using the user interface or the API. See Manage a SQL warehouse.

• Catalog Explorer now displays account service principals in user lists for assets in Unity Catalog. For example, account service principals are visible when editing privileges or changing owners in Catalog Explorer.

• Custom chart labels support the ability to reference any column within the dataset.

• Dashboard filters now load column names, even when using queries that don’t have catalog or schema info.

April 27, 2023

Improvements:

• The SQL editor now relies on the Monaco editor for a more reliable editing experience.

• SQL History list page (Queries) now includes the Dubois Design System.

April 20, 2023

Improvements:

• Introduces new pivot tables that allow you to aggregate more than 64k results.

• Databricks SQL tables and visualizations now support BigInt, 38bit Decimals, and non UTF-8 characters. For numbers, the default setting is now user-defined digit precision.

• Autocomplete now suggests frequent past joins for Unity Catalog tables, powered by Unity Catalog lineage data in Databricks Runtime 12.0 and above.

April 13, 2023

New feature:

• The TIMESTAMP_NTZ type represents values comprising of fields year, month, day, hour, minute, and second. All operations are performed regardless of time zone. See TIMESTAMP_NTZ type.

Improvements:

• Users can now send formatted results within alerts by using the QUERY_RESULT_TABLE tag in a custom alerts message.

• Users can now view the file data size for Unity Catalog tables in Catalog Explorer.

April 6, 2023

Databricks SQL Version 2023.20 Available

Rollout Schedule

• Preview rollout for 2023.20: Between Mar 15, 2023 and Mar 23, 2023

• Current rollout for 2023.20: Between Mar 27, 2023 and Apr 3, 2023

Changes in 2023.20

• Delta Lake schema evolution supports specifying source columns in merge statements.

• Remove all NULL elements from an array using array_compact.

• To append elements to an array, use array_append.

• To anonymize sensitive string values, use the mask function.

• Common error conditions now return SQLSTATE.

• Invoke table-valued generator functions in the regular FROM clause of a query.

• Use the from_protobuf and to_protobuf functions to exchange data between binary and struct types. See Read and write protocol buffers.

• Improved consistency for Delta commit behavior for empty transactions relating to update, delete, and merge commands.

• Behavior change

  • The lateral column alias feature introduces behavior changes during name resolution. See Behavior changes.

User interface updates

Improvements:

• Catalog Explorer now supports Hive metastore delete.

• The message for the visualization editor’s initial state changed from Missing required columns to No Data.

April 3, 2023

New feature:

• The Create or modify table from file upload page now supports JSON file uploads. For more information, see Create or modify a table using file upload.

March 30, 2023

Improvements:

• On the warehouse monitoring page, you can now view the query history for the selected time range along with your scaling charts. You can also view currently running and queued queries, active SQL sessions, the warehouse status, and the current cluster count. See Monitor a SQL warehouse.

• Map clustering is now off by default in Marker maps.

• Tooltips for visualization truncation and render limits have been added.

Fixes:

• Charts now respect the original order when sorting is disabled for the axis values and the chart has the group by column.

March 23, 2023

Improvements:

• Visualizations now support time binning by week.

• Total now calculates all data beyond the 100 X 100 cells up to 64k results in notebooks pivot tables.

• Users can now format cell values in the new notebooks pivot table.

• File, query, and feature store lineage are available.

March 16, 2023

Improvement:

• Support for GROUP BY ALL syntax.

March 9, 2023

New feature:

• The Databricks SQL Statement Execution API is now available in Public Preview. Statement Execution provides endpoints that are running SQL statements on a Databricks SQL warehouse. It can also check the status, fetch results, and cancel a running SQL statement.

Improvement:

• The SQL admin console has been combined with the general admin settings to create a unified experience for admin users. All SQL admin settings are now accessed from the admin console.

• Alert destinations are now called notification destinations.

Fixes:

• Tables no longer display two scrollbars.

• Blank widget titles no longer get overwritten on dashboards.

March 2, 2023

Fix:

• You can now use relative URLs in tables to access dashboards.

February 23, 2023

Improvement:

• TINYINT is now supported in results tables in notebooks.

Fix:

• Fixed a bug where scrolling on the create dashboard filter modal resulted in an error.

February 16, 2023

Improvements:

• Data labels on charts now show more characters to avoid truncating descriptions.

• Autocomplete now recognizes range() and Python UDF create functions.

• Autocomplete now avoids initiating snippets on decimals and within code comments.

Fixes:

• Users can now zoom in on maps.

• In notebooks, colors are now correctly assigned to charts.

February 2, 2023

Improvements:

• Support for DESCRIBE DETAILS in the editor.

• Improved schema browser loading speed.

• You can now view a list of possible columns on the side panel of a SELECT *.

January 26, 2023

Improvement:

• Your query’s error messages now include links to the related documentation topic that describes the error.

January 19, 2023

Improvements:

• You can now find a What’s New panel that highlights key enhancements. You can open and close this panel by clicking the gift icon.

• Admins can now change ownership of SQL warehouses.

• You can now filter across multiple visualizations in a dashboard by clicking Add > Filter and selecting the query and columns for filtering.

January 12, 2023

Improvements:

• Visualization widget titles on dashboards are now formatted as Visualization name - Query name by default.

• Added H3 Geospatial functions to the inline panel reference.

• Added inline references for SQL syntax like CREATE TABLE and OVER.

Fixes:

• Sorting and reverse toggles are now available when the X-axis scale is set to automatic.

• Heat maps and pivot tables are now responsive for certain edge cases.

• The Categorical Y-axis tick marks are now sorted by default.

• Query drafts are no longer lost after doing a browser refresh.

December 8, 2022

• Databricks SQL alerts now support alerts for aggregations of query result columns such as SUM, COUNT, and AVG.

• The default visualization title is now ‘VisualizationName - QueryName’ when creating new widgets on dashboards.

November 17, 2022

Alerts:

• Chatworks, Mattermost, and Google Hangouts Chat are no longer notification destinations.

Improvement:

• The y-axis now displays numbers as percentages when checking percent values.

• The workspace administrator setting to disable the upload data UI now applies to the new upload data UI. This setting applies to the Data Science & Engineering, Databricks Machine Learning, and Databricks SQL personas.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue in Databricks SQL alerts where comparing against null values evaluated incorrectly.

• Fixed an issue where scrollbars on pivot tables disappeared.

• Fixed an issue where the schema browser couldn’t resize with overflowed tabs.

November 10, 2022

Improvement:

• You can now create a dashboard filter that works across multiple queries at the same time. In Edit dashboard mode, choose Add, then Filter, then New Dashboard Filter.

• Autocomplete now supports CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW.

Fix:

• Fixed an issue where scrolling to the end of a set of dashboard paged results would send an error.

• Fixed an issue where switching from a stacked bar chart to a line chart kept the stacking property.

• Fixed duplicated fetch calls.

November 3, 2022

Improvement:

• When requesting access in Databricks SQL, the default permission is now “can run”.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where sorting by created_at using the Queries and dashboards API did not return the correct sort order.

• Fixed an issue where columns containing URLs with HTML formatting had overly wide column widths.

• Fixed an issue where WHERE keyword wasn’t highlighted.

October 27, 2022

Improvements:

• The row limit for downloading query results to Excel has been increased from 64,000 rows to 100,000 rows. CSV & TSV download limits remain unchanged (about 1 GB of data).

• Autocomplete now supports LIST syntax, URLs, and credentials.

• Consolidated and modernized Fix-me suggestion panels.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the warning banner in the editor overlapped full-height visualizations.

• Fixed an issue where table column width was not preserved when columns of the table were moved.

• Fixed an issue where the link to the dashboard in pop-up notifications was broken if a visualization was added from the SQL editor.

October 20, 2022

Improvements:

• You can now find the query progress bar in the footer and the editing a visualization action in the kebab menu.

• Autocomplete now supports Delta time travel, and provides column autocomplete when defining a foreign key.

Fix:

• Fixed an issue where adding multiple visualizations to a dashboard in quick succession would result in visualizations not appearing on the dashboard.

October 13, 2022

Improvements:

• You can now remove reported error messages.

• COMMENT ON instruction is now supported in the editor.

• You can now use Cmd+P or Ctr+P (for PC) as a shortcut for Top search. Use Cmd+I or Ctr+I (for PC) for Add parameters.

October 11, 2022

Improvements:

• The add data UI provides access to common data sources configurations and file upload UIs. See Load data using the add data UI.

• You can uploading small files to Delta Lake using a UI. See Create or modify a table using file upload.

October 6, 2022

Improvements:

• EXTERNAL is now a reserved table property. Commands CREATE TABLE ... TBLPROPERTIES and ALTER TABLE ... SET TBLPROPERTIES fail if EXTERNAL is specified in the properties.

• The strfmt in format_string(strfmt, obj, ...) and printf(strfmt, obj, ...) no longer supports the use of 0$ as the first argument. The first argument should be referenced by 1$ when using an argument index to indicate the position of the argument in the argument list.

• Pie chart segments now have a thin border to delineate different segments.

• You can now use Cmd+I (for Mac) or Ctr+I (for PC) as a shortcut for Add parameter. Use Cmd+P or Ctr+P (for PC) as a shortcut for Global search.

• A feedback button is available for good or bad query error messages.

• Fix me suggestions are now available as Quick fix.

Fixes:

• lpad and rpad functions now work correctly with BINARY string inputs. The output of lpad and rpad for BINARY string inputs is now a BINARY string.

• Fixed an issue where manual alert refreshes were not working.

• Rolled back changes to automatic counter sizing to fix formatting issues.

September 29, 2022

Improvements:

• You can now request access to Databricks SQL Queries, alerts, and dashboards from owners of those assets.

• You can now filter by query duration and statement type on the Query history page.

  • To use the query duration filter, enter an amount of time and choose a time unit. The history result returns queries that run longer than the time specified.

  • To use the statement type filter, choose a statement type from the dropdown. The history result returns queries containing that statement.

Fix:

• Fixed an issue where not all supported HTML tags were working in custom alert templates. All tags are available as documented.

• Fixed an issue where Visualization notification toasts. For example, double clicking to zoom out on a visualization was previously not showing.

• Fixed an issue where swapping the axes on a chart was not reflected in the chart name.

September 22, 2022

Improvements:

• Counter widgets of the same size will have the same font sizing when multiple counter widgets are displayed on a dashboard.

• Updated combination charts so that when using dual axis, only the same chart type (e.g., line, bar) can be used on the same axis. Series aliases are also applied to the axis.

• Added autocomplete support for surrogate keys and LIST operations.

Fix:

• Fixed issue where text parameters did not accept Null as a valid value.

September 15, 2022

Fix:

• Fixed an issue where viewing query history from the SQL warehouses listing page did not work.

September 8, 2022

Improvement:

• Introducing the new ‘Open Source Integrations’ card in DSE/SQL homepages that displays open source integration options such as Delta Live Tables and dbt core.

Fix:

• Fixed an issue where parameter dropdown menus were blocked by the visualization tab.

September 1, 2022

Improvements:

• Introducing a new simplified UI to add parameters and filters. Choose <button>+</button> and choose to add a filter or parameter.

• The parentheses of SQL tokens, such as ‘OVER()’ now get autocompleted.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where viewing the dashboard in full-screen ignored the color palette.

• Fixed an issue where typing quickly and then using the Run shortcut ran the previous query text, instead of the newly typed query text.

• Fixed issue where using the keyboard command, ctrl+enter to run queries would submit duplicate queries.

August 25, 2022

Fix:

• Fixed an issue where dashboard filters were not updating when query parameters changed.

August 18, 2022

• Documentation: Alerts API documentation has been released.

• Visualizations: Users can now set default values for date filters. Any time the filter is refreshed on a query or dashboard, the default value is applied.

• Fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where apply changes did not work if a dashboard was still reloading.

  • Fixed an issue where columns were too narrow when a query returns no results.

August 11, 2022

Improvements:

• Users can receive emails when their refreshes fail. To enable such notifications, navigate to the SQL settings tab of the admin console. Under Failure Emails, choose the type of object (Query, Dashboard, or Alert) for which you wish to receive failure notifications. Failure reports are sent hourly.

• Visualizations

  • Introducing a new, modern color palette for visualizations and dashboards. To change a dashboard to the new color palette, go to your dashboard, click on <button>Edit</button> -> <button>Colors</button> -> <button>Import</button> and select the Databricks Color Palette. SQL Admins can also set the new color palette as the default option for a workspace by going to <button>Settings</button> -> <button>QL Admin Console</button> -> <button>Workspace Colors</button> -> <button>Import</button> and selecting the new palette.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where previously selecting <button>Apply Changes</button> to apply a filter did not work if a query was already being executed.

August 4, 2022

Improvements:

• On cloning a dashboard, there is now an option for whether or not queries should be cloned as well.

• Tab content is synced across browser tabs. The state of your query will now be in sync across all browser tabs. This means that if you are working on query1 in browser tab 1 and then switch to browser tab 2, you’ll see query1 in the state you left it in while in the original browser tab.

Fix:

• Labels for empty strings in pie chart now reflect that the string is empty rather than the index of the value.

July 28, 2022

• Alerts

  • Custom alert email templates have been updated to disallow certain HTML tags that may pose a security risk. Disallowed HTML tags and attributes are automatically sanitized. For example, <button> is a disallowed HTML tag, so instead of rendering a button, the text “button” displays. See Alerts for the list of allowed HTML tags and attributes.

  • Users can now subscribe other users to alerts without needing to create a notification destination, which requires admin permissions.

• Downloads: Users can now download up to approximately 1GB of results data from Databricks SQL in CSV and TSV format, up from 64,000 rows previously.

• Visualizations

  • You can now edit visualizations directly on the dashboard. In edit mode, click on the kebab menu and select Edit visualization to begin editing the visualization.

  • When downloading results associated with a visualization leveraging aggregations, the downloaded results are also aggregated. The option to download is moving from bottom kebab to the kebab associated with the tab. The downloaded results are from the most recent execution of the query that created the visualization.

• SQL editor: Results tables now display a message when data displayed by the in-browser table has been limited to 64,000 rows. TSV and CSV download will still be up to approximately 1GB of data.

• Query filters:

  • Query filters have been updated to work dynamically on either client- or server-side to optimize performance. Previous query filters (now legacy) operated client-side only. Users can still use legacy filters with the :: syntax, if desired.

  • The updated filters are simpler: Users click a +Add Filter button and select a column from a dropdown. Previously, users had to modify the query text directly.

  • Relevant values are highlighted to make it easier to see which selections within a filter will return results given other filter selections.

• Query history: Query details in Query History now show the Query Source, which is the origin of the executed query.

July 21, 2022

• Notifications on share: Users will now be notified by email whenever a dashboard, query, or alert is shared with them.

• Enhanced SQL editor experience via the new embedded editor toolkit

  • Live syntax error highlighting (for example, wrong keyword, table does not exist, and suggestions for fixing the error)

  • In context help: on hover (for example, full table name, detailed Function panel) and inline execution error messages (for example, highlight row with error post execution)

  • Intelligent ranking of suggestions (for example, parameter autocompletion, ranking formula, less noisy matching)

July 14, 2022

• You can now upload TSV files using the Create Table UI in addition to CSV files.

• Databricks SQL now provides the option to notify users by email whenever a dashboard, query, or alert is shared with them.

• Visualization tables now optionally include row numbers displayed next to results.

• When you select a geographic region for the Chloropleth visualization, you now get inline hints for accepted values.

June 23, 2022

• SQL endpoint name change: Databricks changed the name from SQL endpoint to SQL warehouse because it is more than just an API entry point for running SQL commands. A SQL warehouse is a computation resource for all your data warehousing needs, an integral part of the Databricks platform. Compute resources are infrastructure resources that provide processing capabilities in the cloud.

• For Choropleth visualizations, the Key column and Target field selections in the visualization editor have been renamed to Geographic Column and Geographic Type. This renaming for understandability does not introduce any behavior changes to new or existing Choropleths.

• The limit 1000 query option has moved from a checkbox in the SQL query editor to a checkbox in the run button.

• Cached queries in Query History table are now marked with a Cache tag.

• Manually refreshing a dashboard uses the dashboard’s warehouse (if available) instead of each individual query’s warehouse.

• Refreshing an alert always uses the alert’s warehouse, regardless of the Run as Viewer/Owner setting.

June 9, 2022

• When you hover in the endpoint selector, the full endpoint name is displayed as a tooltip.

• When you filter in the SQL editor schema browser, the search term is now highlighted in the search results.

• The Close All dialog box in the SQL editor now displays a list of unsaved queries.

• To reopen the last closed tab in the SQL editor, use this new keyboard shortcut: <Cmd> + <Shift> + <Option> + T

• You can now add data labels to combination charts.

• The list of visualization aggregations operations now includes variance and standard deviation.

May 26, 2022

Authoring improvements:

• You can now bypass aggregations when you author visualizations. This is particularly useful when your query already includes an aggregation. For example, if your query is SELECT AVG(price_per_sqft), isStudio, location GROUP BY location, isStudio, the chart editor previously required explicitly specifying another layer of aggregation.

• When you author dashboards, you now have the ability to:

  • Duplicate textbox widgets

  • Expand the size of the edit textbox panel

• The default aggregation for the error column when you author visualizations is standard deviation.

Fixes:

• Edit actions for visualizations are only available when the dashboard is in edit mode. Edit actions are no longer available as a view mode action.

• When you create a new query, it opens in a tab to the immediate right of the tab in focus rather than at the end of the list.

• The open query modal shows which query is already open and provides the option to switch focus to that query tab.

• The Sankey & Sunburst charts no longer treat 0 as null.

May 19, 2022

• Fixed issue: When you have the focus of the SQL editor open on a specific visualization tab and share the link to another user, the user will have the same focus in the SQL editor when they click the shared link.

• Improvements:

  • Microsoft Teams is now a supported notification destination.

  • The Date Range, Date and Time Range, and Date and Time Range (with seconds) parameters now support the option to designate the starting day of the week, with Sunday as the default.

May 12, 2022

• Visualizations now support time binning directly in the UI. You can now easily switch between yearly, monthly, daily, or hourly bins of your data by changing a dropdown value rather than adding and modifying a date_trunc() function in the query text itself.

• Dashboards now have color consistency by default. If you have the same series across multiple charts, the series is always colored the same across all charts – without requiring any manual configuration.

May 3, 2022

• When sharing a dashboard with a user or group, we now also provide the ability to share all upstream queries used by visualizations and parameters.

  • When you do not have permission to share one or more of the upstream queries, you will receive a warning message that not all queries could be shared.

  • The permissions granted when sharing a dashboard do not override, negate, or expand upon existing permissions on the upstream queries. For example, if a user or group has CAN RUN as Owner permissions on the shared dashboard but only has Run as Viewer permissions on an upstream query, the effective permissions on that upstream query will be Run as Viewer.

April 27, 2022

• Your dashboard layout is now retained when exporting to PDF on demand and generating scheduled subscription emails.

April 25, 2022

• Databricks SQL is now available in Public Preview on Google Cloud Platform.

Known issues

• Reads from data sources other than Delta Lake in multi-cluster load balanced SQL endpoints can be inconsistent.

• Delta tables accessed in Databricks SQL upload their schema and table properties to the configured metastore. If you are using an external metastore, you will be able to see Delta Lake information in the metastore. Delta Lake tries to keep this information as up-to-date as possible on a best-effort basis. You can also use the DESCRIBE <table> command to ensure that the information is updated in your metastore.

• Databricks SQL does not support zone offsets like ‘GMT+8’ as session time zones. The workaround is to use a region based time zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones) like ‘Etc/GMT+8’ instead. See SET TIME ZONE for more information about setting time zones.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

How are Databricks SQL workloads charged?

Databricks SQL workloads are charged according to the Premium Jobs Compute SKU.

Where do SQL endpoints run?

Like Databricks clusters, SQL endpoints are created and managed in your Google Cloud account. SQL endpoints manage SQL-optimized clusters automatically in your account and scale to match end-user demand.

Can I use SQL endpoints from Data Science & Engineering workspace SQL notebooks?

No. You can use SQL endpoints from Databricks SQL queries, BI tools, and other JDBC and ODBC clients.

I have been granted access to data using a cloud provider credential. Why can’t I access this data in Databricks SQL?

In Databricks SQL, all access to data is subject to data access control, and an administrator or data owner must first grant you the appropriate privileges.