Apache Arrow ADBC 24 (Libraries) Release

Published 28 Jul 2026
By The Apache Arrow PMC (pmc)

The Apache Arrow team is pleased to announce the version 24 release of the Apache Arrow ADBC libraries. This release includes 57 resolved issues and 142 merged pull requests from 28 distinct contributors.

This is a release of the libraries, which are at version 24. The API specification is versioned separately and is at version 1.1.0.

The subcomponents are versioned independently:

• C/C++/GLib/Go/Python/Ruby: 1.12.0
• C#: 0.24.0
• Java: 0.24.0
• JavaScript: 0.24.0
• R: 0.24.0
• Rust: 0.24.0

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

Note: we are planning to require C++20 starting from the next release. Also, we will drop support for Python 3.10 no earlier than the release after next i.e. no earlier than release 26. Release 26 is expected in about 3-4 months (October~November 2026), and the EOL for Python 3.10 is October 2026.

Breaking Changes and Deprecations

Development of the ADBC drivers for Apache DataFusion, BigQuery, Databricks, and Snowflake has moved to the ADBC Driver Foundry, an independent, community-maintained project separate from Apache Arrow. The drivers remain available and continue to be developed there. No further releases of those drivers will come from this project, but existing packages will remain available, possibly as archived listings. For background, see the ADBC documentation on driver development. Current driver locations and maintainer information are listed under Drivers.

Similarly, the experimental, incomplete support for Amazon Redshift in the PostgreSQL driver has been removed. A dedicated ADBC driver for Amazon Redshift is available from the ADBC Driver Foundry.

The ADBC drivers for Apache Arrow Flight SQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite continue to be maintained and released by this project.

Java API definitions were narrowed so that close is only declared to throw AdbcException as a checked exception. (#4451)

The PostgreSQL driver now lazily initializes transactions to make it work better with connection pools. (#4424)

Documentation

The documentation has been overhauled and is now organized around three common tasks: finding and installing drivers, connecting through a client library, and developing a driver. (#4525)

The revised docs emphasize ADBC's cross-language driver model: drivers are typically distributed as shared libraries that can be used from any supported language or client.

A new Tools & Integrations page highlights tools and frameworks that integrate with ADBC. We welcome contributions to add more integrations.

A new Connection Profiles page shows how to use reusable profiles to configure ADBC connections.

The docs also describe how most drivers now recognize URIs with schemes matching their names, and how driver managers can use the scheme to resolve the driver when it is not otherwise specified.

Core APIs & Client Libraries

C# now has a native driver manager, allowing it to load drivers, manifests, and profiles (#4075, #4340, #4341, #4330). The core libraries are now compatible with AOT compilation, enabling drivers to be built as standalone shared libaries (#4243, #4318).

The Go database/sql adapter now supports converting more Arrow types to Go types (#4416).

The Java core APIs now support a "fluent" style ingest API (#4466). Also, support for dynamically loading drivers for use in Java has been greatly expanded and should now support all of the ADBC APIs and features expected of a client library (#4452, #4211, #4411, #4202, #4359, #4212, #4263, #4229, #4203, #4361, #4362, #4249, #4250, #4398, #4397, #4423, #4395, #4396, #4391).

The JavaScript client library no longer requires the driver parameter and can infer the driver to load based on the URI, or can accept a profile (#4357).

The R client library no longer requires the driver parameter and can infer the driver to load based on the URI, or can accept a profile (#4535).

Some tweaks have been made to the Rust core APIs to better support interop with dynamically loaded drivers and make certain conventions clearer (#4427, #4510, #4350, #4141, #4181, #4473, #4469).

Drivers

This project continues to maintain and release the ADBC drivers for Apache Arrow Flight SQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. As mentioned above, the DataFusion, BigQuery, Databricks, and Snowflake drivers are now maintained in the ADBC Driver Foundry, alongside many others.

The Flight SQL driver now recognizes URIs with the flightsql:// scheme (#4488). It also has more support for logging and OpenTelemetry tracing (#4322, #4486).

The PostgreSQL driver now uses libpq version 18.4 (up from 16.9) (#4566). Several bugs have been fixed around handling of the NUMERIC type, and it has been optimized on platforms where int128 is available (generally, platforms other than Windows) (#4536, #4499, #4523, #4498). GetObjects now populates the xdbc_type_name field (#4457). JSON columns are now returned with the arrow.json extension type (#4415), and ingesting into JSONB columns is now supported (#4505).

The SQLite driver now uses SQLite version 3.53.1 (up from 3.51.2) (#4566). It now recognizes URIs with the sqlite:// scheme (#4463).

Contributors

$ git shortlog --perl-regexp --author='^((?!dependabot\[bot\]).*)$' -sn apache-arrow-adbc-23..apache-arrow-adbc-24
    58	David Li
    16	Bryce Mecum
    11	Fredrik Fornwall
     7	Curt Hagenlocher
     7	eitsupi
     6	Mandukhai Alimaa
     5	davidhcoe
     4	Matt Topol
     4	takuya kodama
     3	Ian Cook
     3	복준수
     2	Artur Rakhmatulin
     2	Austin Bonander
     2	Bruce Irschick
     2	Daniel_McBride
     2	Emil Sadek
     1	Arnold Wakim
     1	Aurélien Pupier
     1	Dan Liu
     1	Felipe Oliveira Carvalho
     1	Kent Wu
     1	Neal Richardson
     1	Nir Portal
     1	Pavel Agafonov
     1	Rishav Rungta
     1	Shubham Pandey
     1	mete
     1	xinyu.lin

Roadmap

We are working on the next revision of the API standard, focusing on missing features (primarily metadata/catalog data). We welcome anyone interested in contributing. Current progress can be found in the 1.2.0 specification milestone.

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.