Support and Certifications

Visit the following web pages for the latest support and certification information.

Changes for 8.0.1 GA

  • Enhancements:
    • The driver has been enhanced to support key-pair authentication. When key-pair authentication is enabled (AuthenticationMethod=21), you can authenticate to Snowflake using a pair of private and public keys. To configure the driver to use key-pair authentication, you can use the new Private Key Content (PrivateKeyContent), Private Key File (PrivateKeyFile), and Private Key Passphrase (PrivateKeyPassphrase) connection options. For details, see Key-pair authentication.
    • The ODBC Setup Dialog on Windows has been replaced with the Snowflake Configuration Manager. As with the ODBC Setup Dialog, the Configuration Manager is available through the ODBC Administrator. The Configuration Manager enables you to configure data sources, generate connection strings, test connections, and retrieve OAuth tokens. See the following topics for details:
    • The driver has been enhanced to support the authorization code grant, the client credentials grant, and the refresh token grant, in addition to the access token flow. Also, on Windows, the Snowflake Configuration Manager may now be used to obtain access and refresh tokens. See OAuth 2.0 authentication for details.
    • The driver has been modified to map Snowflake fixed-point number types where precision and scale cannot be modified to the Numeric data type by default. In addition, the Integer Field Mapping (IntegerFieldMapping) connection option has been added to the driver. This connection option allows you to map these fixed-point number types to BigInt. For details, see Integer Field Mapping and Data types.
    • The driver is now compiled with a Visual Studio 2022 compiler for the Windows platforms. As a result, you must have Microsoft Visual C/C++ runtime version 14.40.33810 or higher on your machine to run the driver.

    • The driver now allows you to specify whether the driver fetches metadata for only tables in the database to which you are connected when a database name is not specified in metadata calls. When enabled, this behavior can provide better performance for metadata calls by reducing the number of tables queried. You can use the new Use Session Database For Metadata (UseSessionDatabaseForMetadata) connection option to configure the driver's behavior. See Use Session Database for Metadata for details.

    • The driver has been enhanced to support connecting to Snowflake partner applications. You can use the new Partner Application Name (PartnerApplicationName) connection option to specify the name of the partner application to which you want to connect. See Partner Application Name for details.
    • The driver has been enhanced to fall back to JSON query format when the arrow format is not properly initialized. The driver uses a high-speed arrow transfer that requires the restricted APIs from java.nio package. When the JVM is not correctly configured for Java SE 16 and higher, an exception is returned when the driver executes a query. To allow you to continue executing queries in this scenario, you can configure the new Arrow Fallback To JSON (ArrowFallbackToJson) option to switch to the JSON query format. See Arrow Fallback To JSON for details.
    • A Password Encryption Tool, called ddencpwd, is now included with the product package. It encrypts passwords for secure handling in connection strings and odbc.ini files. At connection, the driver decrypts these passwords and passes them to the data source as required. See Password Encryption Tool (UNIX/Linux only) for details.
    • The driver supports using the COPY command for loading and unloading data from local file systems and cloud platforms, such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. See Using COPY command for details.
  • Changed Behavior:
    • The Authentication Method (Authenticator) option has been updated:
      • The attribute, Authenticator, has changed to AuthenticationMethod. To support existing configurations, the original attribute name will continue to be supported for this release.
      • The valid values have changed from enum values to numeric values.

      See Authentication Method for details.

    • The names and attributes for the following options have been changed:
      • The Role (Role) option has been renamed Role Name (RoleName)
      • The Token (Token) option has been renamed Access Token (AccessToken).
      • The User (LogonID) option has been renamed User (User).

      To support existing configurations, the original attribute names for these options will continue to be supported for this release.

    • The following options are no longer exposed because they are not relevant for Snowflake connections:
      • Application Using Threads (ApplicationUsingThreads)
      • Fetch Size (FetchSize)
      • IANAAppCodePage
    • The valid values for Client Session Keep Alive (ClientSessionKeepAlive) have changed from boolean to numeric. See Client Session Keep Alive for details.
    • The default value for the SQL Engine Mode (SQLEngineMode) has changed from 0 (Auto) to 1 (Server) on Windows platforms. See SQL Engine Mode for details.
    • The installer program now requires you to install a JRE that is Java SE 11 or higher before running the installer. In earlier versions, the JRE used by the installer program was included in the product. However, to avoid potential security vulnerabilities, the installer program no longer includes a JRE. Instead, the installer program uses the JRE in your environment to allow for the most secure version of a JRE to be used.
      Note:
      • This change does not affect the JVM requirements for the driver. For the latest driver requirements, refer to the Product Compatibility Guide:

        https://docs.progress.com/bundle/datadirect-product-compatibility/resource/datadirect-product-compatibility.pdf

      • The installer program cannot remove the already installed JRE files from the install directory automatically. Remove them manually.
      • To install the 32-bit drivers on 64-bit Windows platforms and start the SQL engine service, the installer requires the 32-bit version of Java SE 11 or higher installed on your machine and defined on your path.
    • The installer program has been updated to no longer install common components for drivers that do not use them. As a result, the installer program no longer installs the following common components for the Snowflake driver:
      • OpenSSL library files, such as ivopenssl30.so, ddopenssl30.so, fips.so, and openssl.cnf
      • Curl library files, such as libivcurl28.so and libddcurl28.so

      If the files are not used by any other DataDirect driver on your machine, you can safely remove them from existing product directories.

    • For Linux platforms, the product package no longer includes the ODBC Cursor library file (odbccurs.so) because it has some known security vulnerabilities that could potentially expose you to security risks.
      Note: The installer program cannot remove the ODBC Cursor library file automatically while installing a new version of the driver. Remove it manually.

Highlights of 8.0.0 Release

  • The driver serves as a complete pass-through driver. It leverages the Snowflake SQL engine to execute queries.
  • The driver provides enhanced performance over the native ODBC Snowflake driver.
  • The driver supports create, read, update, and delete operations.
  • The driver provides proxy support. See Proxy server support and Connection option descriptions for more information.