date: 2026-04-10 title: 'Spice v2.0-rc.2 (Apr 10, 2026)' type: blog authors: [ewgenius] tags: [release, distributed-query, cayenne, datafusion, delta-lake, databricks, adbc, data-connector]
Announcing the release of Spice v2.0-rc.2! 🔥
v2.0.0-rc.2 is the second release candidate for advanced testing of v2.0, building on v2.0.0-rc.1.
Highlights in this release candidate include:
arrow-rs, datafusion-federation, and datafusion-table-providersPARTITION BY Support for Cayenne enabling SQL-defined partitioning in CREATE TABLE statementssoda (Socrata Open Data) format support, json_pointer extraction, and auto-detectionDistributed query for Cayenne-backed tables now has better partition awareness for both reads and writes.
Key improvements:
DoPut ingestion now splits partitioned Cayenne writes and forwards them to the responsible executors instead of routing through a single raw-forward path.runtime.task_history: Task history is now replicated across the distributed cluster for observability.Spice now supports MERGE INTO statements for Cayenne catalog tables, enabling upsert-style data operations with full distributed support.
Key improvements:
MERGE INTO statements against Cayenne catalog tables for combined insert/update/delete operations.PARTITION BY Support for CayenneSQL Partition Management: Spice now supports PARTITION BY for Cayenne-backed CREATE TABLE statements, enabling partition definitions to be expressed directly in SQL and persisted in the Cayenne catalog.
Key improvements:
CREATE TABLE ... PARTITION BY (...).CREATE TABLE is distributed to executors in cluster mode.Utf8View.Example:
Spice now includes additional catalog connectors for major database systems, improving schema discovery and federation workflows across external data systems.
Key improvements:
information_schema / INFORMATION_SCHEMA to discover schemas and tables.Example PostgreSQL catalog configuration:
JSON ingestion is now more flexible and robust.
Key improvements:
json_pointer Extraction: Extract nested payloads before schema inference and reading using RFC 6901 JSON Pointer syntax.Example using json_pointer to extract nested data from an API response:
Apache DataFusion has been upgraded from v52.2.0 to v52.4.0, with aligned updates across arrow-rs, datafusion-federation, and datafusion-table-providers.
Key improvements:
try_cast_to now uses strict cast to return errors on overflow instead of silently producing NULL values.FlightSQLExec.| Dependency | Version / Update |
|---|---|
| Turso (libsql) | v0.5.3 (from v0.4.4) |
| iceberg-rust | v0.9 |
| Vortex | Map type support, stack-safe IN-lists |
| arrow-rs | Arrow v57.2.0 |
| datafusion-federation | Updated for DataFusion v52.4.0 alignment |
| datafusion-table-providers | Updated for DataFusion v52.4.0 alignment |
| datafusion-ballista | Bumped to fix BatchCoalescer schema mismatch panic |
Cayenne released as RC: Cayenne data accelerator is now promoted to release candidate status.
File Update Acceleration Mode: Added mode: file_update acceleration mode for file-based data refresh.
spice completions Command: New CLI command for generating shell completion scripts, with auto-detection of shell directory.
--endpoint Flag: Added --endpoint flag to spice run with scheme-based routing for custom endpoints.
mTLS Client Auth: Added mTLS client authentication support to the spice sql REPL.
DynamoDB DML: Implemented DML (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) support for the DynamoDB table provider.
Caching Retention: Added retention policies for cached query results.
GraphQL Custom Auth Headers: Added custom authorization header support for the GraphQL connector.
ClickHouse Date32 Support: Added Date32 type support for the ClickHouse connector.
AWS IAM Role Source: Added parameter for fine-grained AWS credential configuration.
location, last_modified, size to _location, _last_modified, _size.v1/evals API removed: The /v1/evals endpoint has been removed.To upgrade to v2.0.0-rc.2, use one of the following methods:
CLI:
Homebrew:
Docker:
Pull the spiceai/spiceai:2.0.0-rc.2 image:
For available tags, see DockerHub.
Helm:
AWS Marketplace:
Spice is available in the AWS Marketplace.
install-postgres action by @krinart in #9629Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v2.0.0-rc.1...v2.0.0-rc.2
iam_role_sourceS3 Metadata Columns: Metadata columns renamed to _location, _last_modified, _size for consistency, with more robust handling in projected queries.
S3 URL Style: Added s3_url_style parameter for S3 connector URL addressing (path-style vs virtual-hosted). Useful for S3-compatible stores like MinIO:
S3 Parquet Performance: Improved S3 parquet read performance.
HTTP Caching: Transient HTTP error responses such as 429 and 5xx are no longer cached, preventing stale error payloads from being served from cache.
HTTP Connector Metadata: Added response_headers as structured map data for HTTP datasets.
Views on_zero_results: Accelerated views now support on_zero_results: use_source to fall back to the source when no results are found:
Flight DoPut Ingestion Metrics: Added rows_written and bytes_written metrics for Flight DoPut / ADBC ETL ingestion.
EXPLAIN ANALYZE Metrics: Added metrics for EXPLAIN ANALYZE in FlightSQLExec.
Scheduler Executor Metrics: Added scheduler_active_executors_count metric for monitoring active executors.
Query Memory Limit: Updated default query memory limit from 70% to 90%, with GreedyMemoryPool for improved memory management.
MetastoreTransaction Support: Added transaction support to prevent concurrent metastore transaction conflicts.
Iceberg REST Catalog: Coerce unsupported Arrow types to Iceberg v2 equivalents in the REST catalog API.
CDC Cache Invalidation: Improved cache invalidation for CDC-backed datasets.
Spice.ai Connector Alignment: Parameter names aligned across catalog and data connectors for Spice.ai Cloud.
Cayenne File Size: Cayenne now correctly respects the configured target file size (defaults to 128MB).
Cayenne Primary Keys: Properly set primary_keys/on_conflict for Cayenne tables.
Turso Metastore Performance: Cached metastore connections and prepared statements for improved Turso and SQLite metastore performance.
Turso SQL Robustness: More robust SQL unparsing and date comparison handling for Turso.
Dictionary Type Normalization: Normalize Arrow Dictionary types for DuckDB and SQLite acceleration.
GitHub Connector Resilience: Improved GraphQL client resilience, performance, and ref filter handling.
ODBC Fix: Fixed ODBC queries silently returning 0 rows on query failure.
Anthropic Fixes: Fixed compatibility issues with Anthropic model provider.
v1/responses API Fix: The /v1/responses API now correctly preserves client instructions when system_prompt is set.
Shared Acceleration Snapshots: Show an error when snapshots are enabled on a shared acceleration file.
Distributed Mode Error Handling: Improved error handling for distributed mode and state_location configuration.
Helm Chart: Added support for ServiceAccount annotations and AWS IRSA example.
Perplexity Removed: Removed Perplexity model provider support.
Rust v1.93.1: Upgraded Rust toolchain to v1.93.1.
spice upgrade by @phillipleblanc in #10194