Amazon Neptune Engine Updates 2019-10-15

Version: 1.0.1.0.200463.0

As of today, Amazon Neptune 1.0.1.0.200463.0 is being deployed to all regions. All new Neptune DB clusters, including those restored from snapshots, will be created in Neptune 1.0.1.0.200463.0 after the engine update is complete for that Region.

Existing clusters can be upgraded to this release immediately using the DB cluster operations on the console or by using the SDK. You can use the following CLI command to upgrade a DB cluster:

aws neptune apply-pending-maintenance-action \
    --apply-action system-update \
    --opt-in-type immediate \
    --resource-identifier arn:aws:rds:<region>:<account number>:<resourcetype>:<name>

Updates are applied to all instances in a DB cluster simultaneously. An update requires a database restart on all instances in a DB cluster, so you will experience downtime ranging from 20–30 seconds to several minutes, after which you can resume using your DB cluster or clusters. You can view or change your maintenance window settings on the Neptune console.

If you have any questions or concerns, the AWS Support team is available on the community forums and through AWS Premium Support.

IMPORTANT: because release 1.0.1.0.200463.0 can introduce breaking changes for some customers, upgrades will NOT occur automatically during the system maintenance window.

If you want to upgrade a DB cluster to 1.0.1.0.200463.0, use the CLI command above to upgrade manually.

New Features in This Engine Release

• Added a Gremlin Explain/Profile feature (see Analyzing Neptune query execution using Gremlin explain).

• Added Support for Gremlin sessions to enable executing multiple Gremlin traversals in a single transaction.

• Added support for the SPARQL Federated Query extension in Neptune (see SPARQL 1.1 Federated Query and SPARQL federated queries in Neptune using the SERVICE extension).

• Added a feature letting you inject your own queryId into a Gremlin or SPARQL query, either through an HTTP URL parameter or through a SPARQL queryId query hint (see Inject a Custom ID Into a Neptune Gremlin or SPARQL Query).

• Added a Lab Mode feature to Neptune that can allow you to try out upcoming features which are not yet ready to be used in production.

• Added an upcoming Neptune Streams feature that reliably logs every change made to your database into a stream that persists for a week. This feature is available only in Lab Mode.

• Updated the formal semantics for concurrent transactions (see Transaction Semantics in Neptune). This feature provides industry-standard guarantees around concurrency.

  By default, these transaction semantics are enabled. In some scenarios, this feature may change current load behavior and reduce load performance. You can use the DB Cluster neptune_lab_mode parameter to revert to the previous semantics by including ReadWriteConflictDetection=disabled in the parameter value.

Improvements in This Engine Release

• Improved the Instance Status API by reporting what version of TinkerPop and what version of SPARQL the engine is using.

• Improved Gremlin subgraph operator performance.

• Improved the performance of Gremlin response serialization.

• Improved the performance in the Gremlin Union step.

• Improved the latency of simple SPARQL queries.

Defects Fixed in This Engine Release

• Fixed a Gremlin bug where timeout was incorrectly being returned as an internal failure.

• Fixed a SPARQL bug in which ORDER BY over a partial set of variables caused an Internal Server Error.