date: 2026-04-21
title: 'Spice v2.0-rc.3 (Apr 21, 2026)'
type: blog
authors: [ewgenius]
tags: [release, data-connector, databricks, snowflake, adbc, kafka, opentelemetry, observability]
Announcing the release of Spice v2.0-rc.3! ⚡
v2.0.0-rc.3 is the third release candidate for advanced testing of v2.0, building on v2.0.0-rc.2 (opens in a new tab).
Highlights in this release candidate include:
- HTTP Connector Enhancements with OAuth2 refresh-token authentication, query-parameter pagination, and map-to-array conversion for broader API compatibility
- Databricks and Unity Catalog Reliability Improvements with resilience controls, improved UC-awareness, permission checks, and structured error reporting
- Snowflake and ADBC Registration Performance Improvements with better observability during dataset registration
- OpenTelemetry Exporter Improvements with exporter fixes and support for authenticated metrics export
- Kafka, GitHub, and HTTP Connector Fixes including Kafka reliability improvements, GitHub GraphQL resilience updates, and HTTP JSON union/reload fixes
What's New in v2.0.0-rc.3
HTTP Connector Enhancements
The HTTP connector (opens in a new tab) now supports more authentication and API response patterns, making it easier to integrate with modern REST APIs.
Key improvements:
- OAuth2 Refresh-Token Authentication: Added support for OAuth2 refresh-token flows (opens in a new tab) for APIs that issue short-lived access tokens.
- Query-Parameter Pagination: Added pagination support using query parameters for APIs that expose page or cursor controls in the URL.
- Map-to-Array Conversion: Added response transformation support for APIs that return map-shaped payloads that need to be normalized into arrays.
- Improved JSON Union Handling: Better handling for heterogeneous JSON payloads during ingestion.
- More Reliable Reloads: Fixed runtime behavior for HTTP-backed datasets during spicepod reloads.
Example configuration of an HTTP connector using the OAuth2 refresh token flow (opens in a new tab):
datasets:
- from: https://api.example.com
name: secure_data
params:
file_format: json
allowed_request_paths: '/v1/**'
auth_token_url: https://auth.example.com/oauth/token
http_auth_refresh_token: ${secrets:my_refresh_token}
http_auth_client_id: ${secrets:my_client_id}
http_auth_client_secret: ${secrets:my_client_secret}
auth_scopes: 'read:data offline_access'
datasets:
- from: https://api.example.com
name: secure_data
params:
file_format: json
allowed_request_paths: '/v1/**'
auth_token_url: https://auth.example.com/oauth/token
http_auth_refresh_token: ${secrets:my_refresh_token}
http_auth_client_id: ${secrets:my_client_id}
http_auth_client_secret: ${secrets:my_client_secret}
auth_scopes: 'read:data offline_access'
Databricks and Unity Catalog Reliability Improvements
Databricks (opens in a new tab) and Unity Catalog (opens in a new tab) integrations are now more resilient and provide clearer behavior in permission-constrained environments.
Key improvements:
- Resilience Controls: Added controls to improve reliability when interacting with Databricks services.
- Unity Catalog Awareness: Improved handling for Unity Catalog-specific behaviors and mixed deployment configurations.
- Permission Prechecks: Databricks UC permission checks now distinguish explicit denials from ambiguous cases.
- Structured Error Reporting: Advisory permission failures now surface with more actionable structured errors.
- Classic SQL Warehouse Compatibility: Improved handling for foreign table scenarios with Classic SQL Warehouse combinations.
- Task History Instrumentation: Added instrumentation to improve observability for Databricks-related operations.
Snowflake and ADBC Improvements
Snowflake (opens in a new tab) and ADBC (opens in a new tab)-backed dataset registration is now faster and easier to observe.
Key improvements:
- Faster Dataset Registration: Improved registration performance for Snowflake and ADBC datasets.
- Better Observability: Added better instrumentation and visibility into registration workflows.
- ADBC Alignment: Updated ADBC dependencies and integration points for improved compatibility.
- Search Schema Fix: Fixed a full-text search schema mismatch issue with the ADBC connector.
OpenTelemetry and Observability Improvements
Spice improves telemetry export reliability and authenticated metrics delivery for the OpenTelemetry (opens in a new tab) integration.
Key improvements:
- OTEL Exporter Fixes: Fixed issues in the OpenTelemetry exporter.
- Authenticated Metrics Export: Added support for authorization headers in the OTEL metrics exporter.
- Reduced Startup Noise: Suppressed unnecessary AWS SDK noise and improved OTEL-related initialization behavior.
- Connector Initialization Reliability: Fixed issues that could block connector initialization in telemetry-related code paths.
Dependency and Toolchain Updates
| Dependency / Component | Version / Update |
|---|
| Rust toolchain | v1.94.1 (from v1.93.1) |
| DataFusion | v52.5.0-rc1 |
| mistral.rs / candle | mistral.rs v0.8.x, candle v0.10.1 |
| ADBC Core | v0.23 |
Other Improvements
- Improved Query Pushdown: Expanded sort and limit pushdown, including improved pushdown behavior for Oracle (opens in a new tab) and MSSQL (opens in a new tab) connectors.
- Partitioned Query Planning Improvements: Improved
PartitionedTableScanRewrite handling for ORDER BY, partition expressions, and fully qualified table references, while preventing incorrect bucketing partition pushdown to executors.
- MongoDB SRV Support: Upgraded
datafusion-table-providers with MongoDB (opens in a new tab) SRV support.
- Tantivy Logging: Search (opens in a new tab) logging now defaults to
warn unless very verbose logging is enabled.
- Kafka Connector Fixes: Improved reliability for the Kafka (opens in a new tab) connector behavior.
- GitHub Connector Resilience: Improved commit fetching for dynamic and slash refs, and reduced GraphQL page sizes on gateway errors for the GitHub (opens in a new tab) connector.
- GitHub API Efficiency: Lowered default comment fetch sizes to reduce pressure on GitHub (opens in a new tab) GraphQL APIs.
- Embedding Validation: Added validation for embedding (opens in a new tab)
row_id columns during dataset initialization.
- View Cache Invalidation: Cached plans are now cleared when views (opens in a new tab) are updated.
- Refresh SQL Dedup Fix: Fixed append refresh (opens in a new tab) deduplication when
refresh_sql selects a subset of columns.
Contributors
Breaking Changes
No breaking changes.
Cookbook Updates
No new cookbook recipes.
The Spice Cookbook (opens in a new tab) includes 86 recipes to help you get started with Spice quickly and easily.
Upgrading
To upgrade to v2.0.0-rc.3, use one of the following methods:
CLI:
spice upgrade v2.0.0-rc.3
spice upgrade v2.0.0-rc.3
Homebrew:
brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice
brew upgrade spiceai/spiceai/spice
Docker:
Pull the spiceai/spiceai:2.0.0-rc.3 image:
docker pull spiceai/spiceai:2.0.0-rc.3
docker pull spiceai/spiceai:2.0.0-rc.3
For available tags, see DockerHub (opens in a new tab).
Helm:
helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai --version 2.0.0-rc.3
helm repo update
helm upgrade spiceai spiceai/spiceai --version 2.0.0-rc.3
AWS Marketplace:
Spice is available in the AWS Marketplace (opens in a new tab).
What's Changed
Changelog
Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v2.0.0-rc.2...v2.0.0-rc.3 (opens in a new tab)
