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Phillip LeBlanc

Phillip LeBlanc

Co-Founder and CTO of Spice AI
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Spice v0.17.1-beta (August 5, 2024)

· 5 min read
Phillip LeBlanc
Phillip LeBlanc
Co-Founder and CTO of Spice AI

The v0.17.1-beta minor release focuses on enhancing stability, performance, and usability. The Flight interface now supports the GetSchema API and s3, ftp, sftp, http, https, and databricks data connectors have added support for a client_timeout parameter.

Highlights in v0.17.1-beta​

Flight API GetSchema: The GetSchema API is now supported by the Flight interface. The schema of a dataset can be retrieved using GetSchema with the PATH or CMD FlightDescriptor types. The CMD FlightDescriptor type is used to get the schema of an arbitrary SQL query as the CMD bytes. The PATH FlightDescriptor type is used to retrieve the schema of a dataset.

Client Timeout: A client_timeout parameter has been added for Data Connectors: ftp, sftp, http, https, and databricks. When defined, the client timeout configures Spice to stop waiting for a response from the data source after the specified duration. The default timeout is 30 seconds.

datasets:
  - from: ftp://remote-ftp-server.com/path/to/folder/
    name: my_dataset
    params:
      file_format: csv
      # Example client timeout
      client_timeout: 30s
      ftp_user: my-ftp-user
      ftp_pass: ${secrets:my_ftp_password}

Breaking Changes​

TLS is now required to be explicitly enabled. Enable TLS on the command line using --tls-enabled true:

spice run -- --tls-enabled true --tls-certificate-file /path/to/cert.pem --tls-key-file /path/to/key.pem

Or in the spicepod.yml with enabled: true:

runtime:
  tls:
    # TLS explicitly enabled
    enabled: true
    certificate_file: /path/to/cert.pem
    key_file: /path/to/key.pem

Contributors​

  • @Jeadie
  • @y-f-u
  • @phillipleblanc
  • @sgrebnov
  • @peasee
  • @Sevenannn

What's Changed​

Dependencies​

  • Rust: Upgraded from v1.79.0 to v1.80.0

Commits​

Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v0.17.0-beta...v0.17.1-beta

Resources​

Community​

Spice.ai started with the vision to make AI easy for developers. We are building Spice.ai in the open and with the community. Reach out on Discord or by email to get involved.

Spice v0.17-beta (July 29, 2024)

· 8 min read
Phillip LeBlanc
Phillip LeBlanc
Co-Founder and CTO of Spice AI

Announcing the first beta release of Spice.ai OSS! 🎉

The core Spice runtime has graduated from alpha to beta! Components, such as Data Connectors and Models, follow independent release milestones. Data Connectors graduating from alpha to beta include databricks, spiceai, postgres, s3, odbc, and mysql. From beta to 1.0, project will be to on improving performance and scaling to larger datasets.

This release also includes enhanced security with Transport Layer Security (TLS) secured APIs, a new spice install CLI command, and several performance and stability improvements.

Highlights in v0.17-beta​

  • Encryption in transit with TLS: The HTTP, gRPC, Metrics, and OpenTelemetry (OTEL) API endpoints can be secured with TLS by specifying a certificate and private key in PEM format.

Enable TLS using the --tls-certificate-file and --tls-key-file command-line flags:

spice run -- --tls-certificate-file /path/to/cert.pem --tls-key-file /path/to/key.pem

Or configure in the spicepod.yml:

runtime:
  tls:
    certificate_file: /path/to/cert.pem
    key_file: /path/to/key.pem

Get started with TLS by following the TLS Sample. For more details see the TLS Documentation.

  • spice install: Running the spice install CLI command will download and install the latest version of the runtime.
spice install

  • Improved SQLite and DuckDB compatibility: The SQLite and DuckDB accelerators support more complex queries and additional data types.

  • Pass through arguments from spice run to runtime: Arguments passed to spice run are now passed through to the runtime.

  • Secrets replacement within connection strings: Secrets are now replaced within connection strings:

datasets:
  - from: mysql:my_table
    name: my_table
    params:
      mysql_connection_string: mysql://user:${secrets:mysql_pw}@localhost:3306/db

Breaking Changes​

The odbc data connector is now optional and has been removed from the released binaries. To use the odbc data connector, use the official Spice Docker image or build the Spice runtime from source.

To build Spice from source with the odbc feature:

cargo build --release --features odbc

To use the official Spice Docker image from DockerHub:

# Pull the latest official Spice image
docker pull spiceai/spiceai:latest

# Pull the official v0.17-beta Spice image
docker pull spiceai/spiceai:0.17.0-beta

Contributors​

  • @y-f-u
  • @peasee
  • @digadeesh
  • @phillipleblanc
  • @ewgenius
  • @sgrebnov
  • @Sevenannn
  • @lukekim

What's Changed​

Dependencies​

Commits​

Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v0.16.0-alpha...v0.17-beta

Resources​

Community​

Spice.ai started with the vision to make AI easy for developers. We are building Spice.ai in the open and with the community. Reach out on Discord or by email to get involved.

Spice v0.13.3-alpha (June 10, 2024)

· 4 min read
Phillip LeBlanc
Phillip LeBlanc
Co-Founder and CTO of Spice AI

The v0.13.3-alpha release is focused on quality and stability with improvements to metrics, telemetry, and operability.

Highlights​

Ready API: - Add /v1/ready API that returns success once all datasets and models are loaded and ready.

Enhanced Grafana dashboard: The dashboard now includes charts for query duration and failures, the last update time of accelerated datasets, the count of refresh errors, and the last successful time the runtime was able to access federated datasets

Contributors​

  • @Jeadie
  • @ewgenius
  • @phillipleblanc
  • @sgrebnov
  • @gloomweaver
  • @y-f-u
  • @mach-kernel

What's Changed​

Dependencies​

  • DuckDB 1.0.0: Upgrades embedded DuckDB to 1.0.0.

Commits​

Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v0.13.2-alpha...v0.13.3-alpha

Resources​

Community​

Spice.ai started with the vision to make AI easy for developers. We are building Spice.ai in the open and with the community. Reach out on Discord or by email to get involved.

Spice v0.12.1-alpha (May 6, 2024)

· 5 min read
Phillip LeBlanc
Phillip LeBlanc
Co-Founder and CTO of Spice AI

The v0.12.1-alpha release introduces a new Snowflake data connector, support for UUID and TimestampTZ types in the PostgreSQL connector, and improved error messages across all data connectors. The Clickhouse data connector enables data streaming by default. The public SQL interface now restricts DML and DDL queries. Additionally, accelerated tables now fully support NULL values, and issues with schema conversion in these tables have been resolved.

Highlights​

  • Snowflake Data Connector: Initial support for Snowflake as a data source.

  • Clickhouse Data Streaming: Enables data streaming by default, eliminating in-memory result collection.

  • Read-only SQL Interface: Disables DML (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) and DDL (CREATE/ALTER TABLE) queries for improved data source security.

  • Error Message Improvements: Improved the error messages for commonly encountered issues with data connectors.

  • Accelerated Tables: Supports NULL values across all data types and fixes schema conversion errors for consistent type handling.

Contributors​

  • @ahirner
  • @y-f-u
  • @sgrebnov
  • @ewgenius
  • @Jeadie
  • @gloomweaver
  • @Sevenannn
  • @digadeesh
  • @phillipleblanc

What's Changed​

Full Changelog: https://github.com/spiceai/spiceai/compare/v0.12.0-alpha...v0.12.1-alpha

Resources​

Community​

Spice.ai started with the vision to make AI easy for developers. We are building Spice.ai in the open and with the community. Reach out on Discord or by email to get involved.

Adding Spice - The Next Generation of Spice.ai OSS

· 4 min read
Phillip LeBlanc
Phillip LeBlanc
Co-Founder and CTO of Spice AI

TL;DR: We've rebuilt Spice.ai OSS from the ground up in Rust, as a unified SQL query interface and portable runtime to locally materialize, accelerate, and query datasets sourced from any database, data warehouse or data lake. Learn more at github.com/spiceai/spiceai.

In September, 2021, we introduced Spice.ai OSS as a runtime for building AI-driven applications using time-series data.

We quickly ran into a big problems in making these applications work... data, the fuel for intelligent software, was painfully difficult to access, operationalize, and use, not only in machine learning, but also in web frontends, backend applications, dashboards, data pipelines, and notebooks. And we had to make hard tradeoffs between cost and query performance.

We felt this pain every day building 100TB+ scale data and AI systems for the Spice.ai Cloud Platform. So we took our learnings and infused them back into Spice.ai OSS with the capabilities we wished we had.

We rebuilt Spice.ai OSS from the ground up in Rust, as a unified SQL query interface and portable runtime to locally materialize, accelerate, and query data tables sourced from any database, data warehouse or data lake.

Figure 1. Spice.ai OSS

Spice is a fast, lightweight (< 150Mb), single-binary, designed to be deployed alongside your application, dashboard, and within your data or machine learning pipelines. Spice federates SQL query across databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.), data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, etc.) and data lakes (S3, MinIO, Databricks, etc.) so you can easily use and combine data wherever it lives. Datasets, declaratively defined, can be materialized and accelerated using your engine of choice, including DuckDB, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and in-memory Apache Arrow records, for ultra-fast, low-latency query. Accelerated engines run in your infrastructure giving you flexibility and control over price and performance.

Before Spice​

Figure 2. Before Spice, applications submit many queries to external data sources. Figure 2. Before Spice, applications submit many queries to external data sources.

With Spice​

Figure 3. With Spice, data is materialized and accelerated locally for fast, low-latency query.

Use-Cases​

The next-generation of Spice.ai OSS enables:

Better applications. Accelerate and co-locate data with frontend and backend applications, for high concurrent queries, serving more users with faster page loads and data updates. Try the CQRS sample app.

Snappy dashboards, analytics, and BI. Faster, more responsive dashboards without massive compute costs. Spice supports Arrow Flight SQL (JDBC/ODBC/ADBC) for connectivity with Tableau, Looker, PowerBI, and more. Watch the Apache Superset with Spice demo.

Faster data pipelines, machine learning training and inference. Co-locate datasets with pipelines where the data is needed to minimize data-movement and improve query performance. Predict hard drive failure with the SMART data demo.

Easily query many data sources. Federated SQL query across databases, data warehouses, and data lakes using Data Connectors.

Community Built​

Spice is open-source, Apache 2.0 licensed, and is built using industry-leading technologies including Apache DataFusion, Arrow, and Arrow Flight SQL. We're launching with several built-in Data Connectors and Accelerators and Spice is extensible so more will be added in each release. If you're interested in contributing, we'd love to welcome you to the community!

Getting Started​

You can download and run Spice in less than 30 seconds by following the quickstart at github.com/spiceai/spiceai.

Conclusion​

Spice, rebuilt in Rust, introduces a unified SQL query interface, making it simpler and faster to build data-driven applications. The lightweight Spice runtime is easy to deploy and makes it possible to materialize and query data from any source quickly and cost-effectively. Applications can serve more users, dashboards and analytics can be snappier, and data and ML pipelines finish faster, without the heavy lifting of managing data.

For developers this translates to less time wrangling data and more time creating innovative applications and business value.

Check out and star the project on GitHub!

Thank you,

Phillip