NEWS

   1 #####################################
   2 Major Changes between 1.5.x and 1.6.x
   3 -------------------------------------
   4 API
   5 ---
   6 * librrd_th is gone. librrd is now fully thread-safe
   7
   8 RRD Graph
   9 ---------
  10 * new CDEF function SMIN: a,b,c,3,SMIN -> min(a,b,c)
  11 * new CDEF function SMAX: a,b,c,3,SMAX -> max(a,b,c)
  12 * new CDEF function STDEV: a,b,c,3,STDEV -> stdev(a,b,c)
  13 * new CDEF function POW: a,b,POW -> a**b
  14 * new CDEF function PERCENT: a,b,c,95,3,PERCENT -> find 95percentile of a,b,c
  15
  16 #####################################
  17 Major Changes between 1.4.x and 1.5.x
  18 -------------------------------------
  19
  20 RRD Graph
  21 ---------
  22 * Ability to use data from a callback function to supply data
  23   for graphs. With perl bindings for writing the callbacks in perl.
  24
  25 * Second color option for AREAs causing a gradient effect
  26   by Rian Shelley
  27
  28 * RRDcached awareness. Instead of just flushing the file, data can now
  29   be pulled in from remote RRDcached instances.
  30
  31 * VDEF results do now explicitly KNOW when they have no time associated
  32   and can behave appropriately. -- Jean-Edouard Babin
  33
  34 RRDcreate
  35 ---------
  36 Ability to use exiting rrd files to pre-populate new ones. Allowing to
  37 preserve data even when fundamentally changing the structure of your rrd
  38 files.
  39
  40 RRDcached
  41 ----------
  42 * New FETCH command allowing rrd_fetch to operate through the daemon and
  43   thus work remotely. By Florian Forster
  44
  45 * New rrd_client commands INFO, FIRST, LAST, CREATE by Steve Shipway
  46
  47 API
  48 ---
  49 * exported rrd_update_v_r for theadsave rrd_update calls
  50
  51 libDBI
  52 ------
  53 * make rrdfillmissing actually work. The parameter is now in seconds and not
  54   in steps for ease of use by Hans J�rgen Jakobsen
  55
  56 Bindings
  57 --------
  58 * dotnet by  Chris Larsen of Euphoria Audio
  59
  60
  61 #####################################
  62 Major Changes between 1.3.x and 1.4.x
  63 -------------------------------------
  64
  65 RRD Caching Daemon (rrdcached)
  66 ------------------------------
  67 by Florian Forster and Kevin Brintnall
  68
  69 The RRD Caching Daemon can dramatically improve the 'update' performance
  70 of your system.  Due to file handling overheads, the time it takes todo one
  71 update is virtually the same as to doing two updates in a row.
  72
  73 The Cache Daemon intercepts rrdtool update calls, assembling multiple
  74 updates before writing them to the actual rrd file. When calling rrdtool
  75 graph in such a setup, the command will tell the daemon to flush out all
  76 pending updates for the rrd files, required to draw the graph.
  77
  78 See rrdcached documentation.
  79
  80 RRD Dumping and Restoring (rrdtool dump/restore)
  81 ------------------------------------------------
  82 by Tobi Oetiker
  83
  84 The output of rrdtool dump has been adjusted to be simpler to parse by
  85 existing xml parsers.
  86
  87 The restore core has been completely re-written yet again and is now relying
  88 on an incremental xml parser. This has the advantage that the memory
  89 consumption while restoring xml files is only slightly larger than the
  90 resulting rrd file. Which is much less than the requirements of the 1.3 and
  91 even 1.2
  92
  93 RRD Graphing functions (rrdtool graph)
  94 --------------------------------------
  95 by Martin Sperl
  96
  97 * VDEF PERCENTNAN (a PRECENT that ignores NAN)
  98
  99 * CDEF PREDICT and PREDICTSIGMA functions for on-the-fly
 100   data prediction without the need to modify existing rrd files as it is
 101   required for HoltWinters.
 102
 103 * LibDBI integration provides a path to read data directly of a supported
 104   SQL database into rrdtool graph. See rrdgraph_libdbi documentation.
 105
 106 Miscellaneous Changes
 107 ---------------------
 108 * graph legends can now be placed left, right or above the graph with the
 109   new --legend-direction and --legend-positon placement options.
 110   by Melchior Rabe
 111
 112 * switched to using automake 1.11 which provides a 'silent' build process,
 113   causing errors and warnings to stand out much more than before.
 114   by Tobi Oetiker
 115
 116 * switched from intltoolize to autopoint for the i18n configuration.
 117   by Tobi Oetiker
 118
 119 * new graph option --grid-dash on:off to configure the dash length
 120   in the grid painted over the graph by Tobi Oetiker
 121
 122 * lua bindings for rrdtool
 123   by Fidelis Assis
 124
 125 * various improvements to rrd_open functions and mmap handling
 126   by Daniel Pocock
 127
 128 * allow the HW smoothing window size to be set to 0 with rrdtool tune
 129   by sylvain luiset
 130
 131 * new graph option --border to set the 3d border width
 132   by Bernhard Reutner-Fischer
 133
 134 * draw different color markers (enable with --dynamic-labels) depending on the
 135   type of element in the graph by Lo�c Tortay
 136
 137 for more detail see the CHANGES file.
 138
 139 #####################################
 140 Major Changes between 1.2.x and 1.3.x
 141 -------------------------------------
 142
 143 NEW Fast file access methods (Bernhard Fischer / Tobi Oetiker)
 144 ----------------------------
 145 * introduced file-accessor functions rrd_read/rrd_seek/rrd_write
 146
 147 * implemented full mmap-based file access with madvise hints for
 148   improved scalability, much reduced memory-footprint and much less
 149   blocking while accessing the disk
 150
 151 * implemented optional full file-descriptor access instead of FILE*
 152   access
 153
 154 NEW Graphing (Tobi Oetiker)
 155 ------------
 156 * libart has been replaced by cairo/pango
 157
 158 * pango markup is supported (--pango-markup)
 159
 160 * full grid fitting
 161
 162 * --graph-render-mode=mono for non anti aliased graphing
 163
 164 * --font-render-mode=mono for non anti aliased fonts
 165
 166 * fonts come through fontconfig, use the Pango font naming scheme
 167   -> 'Times 20' ... it is not possible to use true-type fonts
 168   directly anymore.
 169
 170 * Tabs are position independent.
 171
 172 * TRENDNAN filter that ignores NAN values while calculating the
 173   TREND data. (Timo Stripf)
 174
 175 * --full-size-mode to specify the outer border of the image and not
 176   just of the graphing canvas (Matthew Chambers)
 177
 178 * TEXTALIGN command to alter default text alignment behavior
 179
 180 * C API in-memory graphing with rrd_graph_v (Evan Miller)
 181
 182 * draw dashed lines in graphs (Thomas Gutzler)
 183
 184 * new interface graphv which returns information using the rrd_info
 185   interface (Tobi Oetiker and Mark Plaksin)
 186
 187 * improved horizontal grid. Have a bit more grid lines and y-axis
 188   labels while keeping them far enough apart to not run into each
 189   other.
 190
 191 NEW Forecasting (Evan Miller)
 192 ---------------
 193 * the new MHWPREDICT consolidation function uses a variation of the
 194   Holt-Winters method. It is a drop-in replacement for HWPREDICT,
 195   and is better suited for data whose seasonal variations grow or
 196   shrink in proportion to the average.
 197
 198 * If you create an RRD with the new MHWPREDICT function, the
 199   resulting rrd file will be version 0004 and can only be used in
 200   rrdtool 1.3.
 201
 202 Rewrites
 203 --------
 204 * rrd_restore now uses libxml for parsing which makes things much
 205   more tolerant towards xml variations. The old code could mostly
 206   just parse the XML as it was output by rrdtool dump. See also:
 207   the note at the bottom of this document. (by Florian octo
 208   Forster)
 209
 210 * rrd_update rewritten to make it more modular. Fixed two
 211   longstanding HW bugs in the process (Evan Miller)
 212
 213 Internationalization (Takao Fujiwara and Tobi Oetiker)
 214 --------------------
 215 * The help output by rrdtool has been internationalized. There are
 216   no real translations included with rrdtool yet, contributions are
 217   welcome.
 218
 219 * The internationalization will only be compiled if libintl and
 220   friends are available on your system. Use the configure option
 221   --disable-libintl if you want to disable this feature
 222
 223 Language Bindings
 224 -----------------
 225 * ruby rrd_fetch will return step as a last property -- Mike Perham
 226
 227 RRDtool dump / restore incompatibility
 228 --------------------------------------
 229 * rrdtool dump 1.3 does emit completely legal XML. Basically this
 230   means that it contains an XML header and a DOCTYPE definition.
 231   Unfortunately this causes older versions of rrdtool restore to be
 232   unhappy.
 233
 234 * To restore a new dump with an old rrdtool restore version, either
 235   remove the XML header and the doctype by hand (both on the first
 236   line of the dump) or use rrdtool dump --no-header.
 237
 238
 239 ######################################################################################
 240 Major Changes between 1.0.x and 1.2.x
 241 ======================================================================================
 242 Graphing
 243 --------
 244
 245 * rewritten graphics generation based on libart.
 246   - anti-aliased output
 247   - alpha transparency support
 248   - truetype fonts
 249
 250 * additional graphics formats: EPS, PDF, SVG
 251
 252 * extended multi-part documentation
 253
 254 * VDEF support; define and use variables.  Find, and use, the
 255   maximum rate seen by rrdtool; compute and show the average
 256
 257 * Sliding window (trend) analysis
 258   Compute a smoother average, for instance over the last 6 CDPs
 259
 260 * percentile (95th or other)
 261   Remove peaks, 95 percent of all rates are at or below the
 262   returned value
 263
 264 Logging
 265 -------
 266 * a second logging interface: rrdtool updatev
 267   Verbose updating of the database; show CPDs being created
 268
 269 * Aberrant Behavior Detection with Holt-Winters Forecasting
 270   Compare current data with expected data, detect and log when
 271   the rates are outside expected levels
 272
 273 * COMPUTE data type for artificial data-sources calculating their
 274   input using RPN math and data from the other data-sources.
 275
 276 Incompatibilities
 277 -----------------
 278 * Colons in COMMENT arguments to rrdtool graph must be escaped with a backslash
 279
 280 * the --alt-y-mrtg option is gone or rather since 1.2.7 it is back but
 281   without functionality.
 282
 283 * In pipe mode, rrdtool answers with OK only if it was successful with the
 284   command. Otherwise the answer will be ERROR...
 285
 286
 287 Behind the Scenes
 288 -----------------
 289 * In order to support Holt-Winters and Calculated Datasources,
 290   the rrdtool data format has changed. While the new version of rrdtool can
 291   read files created with rrdtool 1.0.x. It is not possible to read files
 292   created by rrdtool-1.2.x with rrdtool-1.0.x
 293
 294 * External libraries are not included with rrdtool anymore. This is in line
 295   with todays trend of using shared libraries everywhere. With the exception
 296   of the cgi library most things required by rrdtool will be found on every recent
 297   system.
 298
 299 * Memory Mapped IO support for faster logging.