Apache Arrow ADBC 18 (Libraries) Release

Published 06 May 2025
By The Apache Arrow PMC (pmc)

The Apache Arrow team is pleased to announce the version 18 release of the Apache Arrow ADBC libraries. This release includes 28 resolved issues from 22 distinct contributors.

This is a release of the libraries, which are at version 18. The API specification is versioned separately and is at version 1.1.0.

The subcomponents are versioned independently:

  • C/C++/GLib/Go/Python/Ruby: 1.6.0
  • C#: 0.18.0
  • Java: 0.18.0
  • R: 0.18.0
  • Rust: 0.18.0

The release notes below are not exhaustive and only expose selected highlights of the release. Many other bugfixes and improvements have been made: we refer you to the complete changelog.

Release Highlights

Using Meson to build the project has been improved (#2735, #2746).

The C# bindings and its drivers have seen a lot of activity in this release. A Databricks Spark driver is now available (#2672, #2737, #2743, #2692), with support for features like CloudFetch (#2634, #2678, #2691). The general Spark driver now has better retry behavior for 503 responses (#2664), supports LZ4 compression applied outside of the Arrow IPC format (#2669), and supports OAuth (#2579), among other improvements. The “Apache” driver for various Thrift-based systems now supports Apache Hive in addition to Apache Spark and Apache Impala (#2540), among other improvements. The BigQuery driver adds more authentication and other configuration settings (#2655, #2566, #2541, #2698).

The Flight SQL driver supports OAuth (#2651).

The Java bindings experimentally support a JNI wrapper around drivers exposing the ADBC C API (#2401). These are not currently distributed via Maven and must be built by hand.

The Go bindings now support union types in the database/sql wrapper (#2637). The Golang-based BigQuery driver returns more metadata about tables (#2697).

The PostgreSQL driver now avoids spurious commit/rollback commands (#2685). It also handles improper usage more gracefully (#2653).

The Python bindings now make it easier to pass options in various places (#2589, #2700). Also, the DB-API layer can be minimally used without PyArrow installed, making it easier for users of libraries like polars that don’t need or want a second Arrow implementation (#2609).

The Rust bindings now avoid locking the driver on every operation, allowing concurrent usage (#2736).

Contributors

$ git shortlog --perl-regexp --author='^((?!dependabot\[bot\]).*)$' -sn apache-arrow-adbc-17..apache-arrow-adbc-18
    20	David Li
     6	William Ayd
     5	Curt Hagenlocher
     5	davidhcoe
     4	Alex Guo
     4	Felipe Oliveira Carvalho
     4	Jade Wang
     4	Matthijs Brobbel
     4	Sutou Kouhei
     4	eric-wang-1990
     3	Bruce Irschick
     2	Milos Gligoric
     2	Sudhir Reddy Emmadi
     2	Todd Meng
     1	Bryce Mecum
     1	Dewey Dunnington
     1	Filip Wojciechowski
     1	Hiroaki Yutani
     1	Hélder Gregório
     1	Marin Nozhchev
     1	amangoyal
     1	qifanzhang-ms

Roadmap

There is some discussion on a potential second revision of ADBC to include more missing functionality and asynchronous API support. For more, see the milestone. We would welcome suggestions on APIs that could be added or extended. Some of the contributors are planning to begin work on a proposal in the near future.

Getting Involved

We welcome questions and contributions from all interested. Issues can be filed on GitHub, and questions can be directed to GitHub or the Arrow mailing lists.