<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>1996</year><year>2013</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>Mnesia Release Notes</title>
<prepared>Dan Gudmundsson and Håkan Mattsson</prepared>
<responsible></responsible>
<docno></docno>
<approved></approved>
<checked></checked>
<date>05-01-26</date>
<rev>AE</rev>
<file>notes.xml</file>
</header>
<p>This document describes the changes made to the Mnesia system
from version to version. The intention of this document is to
list all incompatibilities as well as all enhancements and
bugfixes for every release of Mnesia. Each release of Mnesia
thus constitutes one section in this document. The title of each
section is the version number of Mnesia.</p>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.12.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Force load table could hang when a node went away during
start up.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11948 Aux Id: seq12585 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The time for inserting locks for a transaction with large
number of locks is reduced significantly.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11981</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.12</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Some local implementations of removing the last element
from a list are replaced by <c>lists:droplast/1</c>. Note
that this requires at least <c>stdlib-2.0</c>, which is
the stdlib version delivered in OTP 17.0. (Thanks to Hans
Svensson)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11678</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Application upgrade (appup) files are corrected for the
following applications: </p>
<p>
<c>asn1, common_test, compiler, crypto, debugger,
dialyzer, edoc, eldap, erl_docgen, et, eunit, gs, hipe,
inets, observer, odbc, os_mon, otp_mibs, parsetools,
percept, public_key, reltool, runtime_tools, ssh,
syntax_tools, test_server, tools, typer, webtool, wx,
xmerl</c></p>
<p>
A new test utility for testing appup files is added to
test_server. This is now used by most applications in
OTP.</p>
<p>
(Thanks to Tobias Schlager)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11744</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
To prevent a race condition if there is a short
communication problem when node-down and node-up events
are received. They are now stored and later checked if
the node came up just before mnesia flagged the node as
down. (Thanks to Jonas Falkevik )</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11497</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Added <c>mnesia:sync_log/0</c> to explicit sync mnesias
transaction log.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11729</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.11</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fixed a race in mnesia which could cause hanging
transaction when sticky locks had been used. Thanks
janchochol.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11375</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed dirty_update_counter which could return ok, thanks
Anton Ryabkov.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11485</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.10</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fix timing issues in checkpoint creation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10957</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fixed a problem where the fallback BUP file is removed
when calling mnesia:uninstall_fallback and mnesia is not
started.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11241</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.9</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
If mnesia:clear_table/2 was called during a table load on
that table, the schema record was written to the table
instead of clearing table.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11030 Aux Id: seq12267 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Optimize index creation for Mnesia set tables. Thanks to
Nick Marino.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11103</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.8</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Use chained send_after instead of send_interval, to make
decrease the number of messages sent after a sleep
(Thanks to James Wheare)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10636</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix format of mnesia overload message (Thanks to Ahmed
Omar)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10639</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Added a general framework for executing benchmarks of
Erlang/OTP. Benchmarks for the Erlang VM and mnesia have
been incorporated in the framework. </p>
<p>
For details about how to add more benchmarks see
$ERL_TOP/HOWTO/BENCHMARKS.md in the source distribution.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10156</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Where necessary a comment stating encoding has been
added to Erlang files. The comment is meant to be removed
in Erlang/OTP R17B when UTF-8 becomes the default
encoding. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10630</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Remove support for the query keyword and query
expressions. Thanks to Loïc Hoguin.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10729</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.7.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Add tests showing that trying to delete non-existing
object may corrupt the </p>
<p>
In case of bag tables, trying to delete a non-existing
object leads to the index becoming corrupt. This happens
if the non-existing object we try to delete happens to
share its key and index field value with a single
existing object in the table. Result: The index entry
corresponding to the existing object is removed.</p>
<p>
Prevent index from being corrupted if a nonexistent item
is deleted</p>
<p>
We have to ensure that we actually delete the last object
with a given (key, index) pair before removing the index.
Thanks to Bartlomiej Puzon</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10220</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.7</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Returns the same value for
mnesia_loader:disc_load_table/2 as
mnesia_loader:net_load_table/4 if a table copy can not be
found. (Thanks to Uwe Dauernheim)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10015</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Improved table lock algorithm.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9890</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.6</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Reduce calls to phash in key_to_frag_number</p>
<p>
Original code calls phash 1..2 times, based on which
fragment the hashed key targets and how many fragments
exist. New code always calls phash only once.</p>
<p>
Add mnesia_frag_hash test (Thanks to Philip Robinson)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9722</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed a sticky lock bug which caused mnesia:read(Tab,
Key, write) return undefined.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9786</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Use the synchronous log_terms instead of alog_terms in
mnesia_log:ets2dcd()</p>
<p>
This avoids the situation where mnesia could dump a very
large ets table in its entirety into the message queue of
the disk_log process, causing memory blowup and choking
the disk logger. (Thanks to Richard Carlsson)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9804</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Implemented a new option to mnesia:create_table/2 which
allows the user to assign 'ets' and 'dets' options not
available in mnesia.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8970</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.5.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fix deadlock in mnesia:del_table_copy/2.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9689 Aux Id: seq11927 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Allow schema operations when using different mnesia
versions.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9657 Aux Id: seq11926 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.5</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fix protocol issues. Mnesia-4.4.19 could not communicate
with to older nodes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9473</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> XML files have been corrected. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9550 Aux Id: OTP-9541 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Dump the log even if no transactions have been invoked on
local node, otherwise the log will grow forever with
decisions from the other nodes who have tables on disk.
Thanks Marek Majkowski.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9551</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Use dedicated api for clear_table, i.e. instead of
match_delete use delete_all_objects. Thanks KukHyun Lee.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9558</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.19</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia could crash if mnesia:add_table_index/2 was
invoked before the table was loaded on all nodes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9285 Aux Id: seq11844 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add {majority, boolean()} per-table option.</p>
<p>
With {majority, true} set for a table, write transactions
will abort if they cannot commit to a majority of the
nodes that have a copy of the table. Currently, the
implementation hooks into the prepare_commit, and forces
an asymmetric transaction if the commit set affects any
table with the majority flag set. In the commit itself,
the transaction will abort if it cannot satisfy the
majority requirement for all tables involved in the
transaction.(Thanks to Ulf Wiger)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9304</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.18</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Call chmod without the "-f" flag</p>
<p>
"-f" is a non-standard chmod option which at least SGI
IRIX and HP UX do not support. As the only effect of the
"-f" flag is to suppress warning messages, it can be
safely omitted. (Thanks to Holger Weiß)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9170</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia sometimes failed to update meta-information in
large systems, which could cause table content to be
inconsistent between nodes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9186 Aux Id: seq11728 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.17</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Calling mnesia:first/1 on empty fragmented table works.
Thanks Magnus Henoch.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9108</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
If Mnesia detects that the network is not fully connected
during start, Mnesia will not start until all nodes are
reachable.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9115 Aux Id: seq-11728 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fix issues reported by dialyzer.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9107</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.16</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Sometimes a 'log_header' record was added to tables when
invoking mnesia:restore/2 with the option
'recreate_tables'. Thanks Vance Shipley.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8960</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Compiler warnings were eliminated.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8855</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.15</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Eliminated warnings for auto-imported BIF clashes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8840</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.14</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Added mnesia:subscribe(activity) contributed by Bernard
Duggan.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8519</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.13</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Transactions could be left hanging if a node went down
when invoking mnesia:sync_transaction/[1,2]. Thanks Igor
Ribeiro Sucupira.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8402</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Igor Ribeiro Sucupira added the option to compress data
when copying tables between Mnesia nodes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8406</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.12</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The documentation is now built with open source tools
(xsltproc and fop) that exists on most platforms. One
visible change is that the frames are removed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8250</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.11</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fixed duplicate results with mnesia:index_read() on
ordered_set tables. Reported by Sam Bobroff. </p>
<p>
Fixed locking in mnesia:index_read() which now grabs a read
table lock to ensure correctness, this may slow down the
operation or block other processes trying to reach the
same table. </p>
<p>
Calling mnesia:dump_log() could crash mnesia,
Reported by Igor Ribeiro Sucupira.</p>
<p> Own Id: OTP-8074</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.10</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia crashed if a qlc query was running inside a
transaction when mnesia stopped at another node. Thanks
Teemu Antti-Poika.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7968</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia could crash when loading local_content tables.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8002 Aux Id: seq11277 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Minor (smp) optimizations.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7928</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.9</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
mnesia:clear_table/1 crashed instead of returning
<c>{aborted,..}</c> if it was called inside a
transaction.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7911</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.8</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
With bad timing several api functions could return or
exit with a bad error message when mnesia was shutting
down.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7753 Aux Id: seq11179 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>mnesia:clear_table/1</c> cleared all nodes table
content even if the table was <c>local_content</c> only
type.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7835</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.7</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Disallowed match patterns ('_', and '$n') as argument to
<c>mnesia:delete_object/1</c> and friends.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7524</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Introduced a few new functions in Mnesia: <c>mnesia:read/2</c>,
<c>mnesia:first/3</c>, <c>mnesia:last/3</c>, <c>mnesia:prev/4</c>,
<c>mnesia:next/4</c>, <c>mnesia_frag:first/1</c>, <c>mnesia_frag:last/1</c>,
<c>mnesia_frag:prev/2</c>, <c>mnesia_frag:next/2</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7625</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.6</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
<c>mnesia:restore/2</c> aborted if a <c>EXIT</c> message
appeared in the client message queue.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7585 Aux Id: seq11046 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.5</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
mnesia:clear_table/1 does not require that all
replicas of the table are available anymore.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7466 Aux Id: seq11015</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.4</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia did not garbage collect transaction decisions on
disk based nodes if no transactions where made on the
local node.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7419</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Table referred to by foreign key did not have node_pool
properly cleaned up when a node was removed from the
schema. Thanks Paul Mineiro.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7340</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia crashed and generated a core dump if a
schema_transaction was running when mnesia stopped.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7378 Aux Id: seq10964 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
It is now possible to delete a db node even when other
disk resident nodes are down. Thanks Paul Mineiro.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7383</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Sticky locks could lead to hanging transactions.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7205 Aux Id: seq10793 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>mnesia:snmp_get_next_index/2</c> didn't work with
partial index keys. Argument checking is now done
according to documentation, in functions
<c>mnesia:snmp_get_row/2</c>,
<c>mnesia:snmp_get_mnesia_key/2</c> and
<c>mnesia:snmp_get_next_index/2</c>. These functions now
require that <c>RowIndex</c> is a list.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7208</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Snmp index tables was not initialized correctly in
<c>mnesia-4.4</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7170 Aux Id: seq10870 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Known Bugs and Problems</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Rearranging fragmented tables is an O(N^2) operation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6300</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Mnesia 4.4</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia ignored the module argument to
<c>mnesia:restore/2</c>. Thanks Paul Minerio.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6981</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Mnesia's snmp operations <c>snmp_get_row/2</c>,
<c>snmp_get_next_index/2</c> and
<c>snmp_get_mnesia_key/2</c> have been made context
aware, i.e. inside a transaction they will compensate for
table updates made in earlier in the same transaction.
This might cause a performance drop if a lot of updates
have been made before the invocation of these functions.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6856 Aux Id: seq10671 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Introduced erlang:phash/2 as new default for fragmented
tables. Already existing tables will continue to use
whatever hash function they where using.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6923</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Introduced <c>mnesia:is_transaction/0</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6995 Aux Id: seq10812 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Known Bugs and Problems</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Rearranging fragmented tables is an O(N^2) operation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6300</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
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