March 2016 Summaries

The Early Adopter release of Aerospike Node.js Client v2.0 has been announced, featuring significant updates and some backward-incompatible API changes. This version is not yet production-ready but aims to preview the upcoming final release and gather community feedback. The new asynchronous I/O model in v2.0 brings performance improvements of 35% to 45%. Support for Node.js v0.10 has been dropped, while error-first callback semantics have been implemented following community feedback. A new batch read command replaces the existing batch get/select/exist commands and requires Aerospike server version >= 3.6.0. The final release of v2.0 is expected in a few weeks, depending on user feedback.

The Aerospike C/C++ client version 4.0 introduces asynchronous programming support, joining the Java and C# clients in this feature. Asynchronous calls allow a single thread to issue multiple commands and receive callbacks upon completion, reducing resource utilization and enabling better scaling compared to synchronous calls that tie up threads for the duration of each command. The event loop style of concurrent programming is used by the Aerospike C client's async commands, which return all results within a single thread. This tutorial demonstrates how to use the Aerospike C client's asynchronous interface to read and write large batches of records efficiently.

The Aerospike Python Client 2.0 introduces support for Python 3, making it compatible with versions 2.6, 2.7, 3.4, and 3.5. Key differences between Python 2 and 3 include changes in string handling, division operation behavior, the elimination of xrange() function, and altered syntax for raising and handling exceptions. The migration from Python 2 to 3 requires adjustments in code that uses Unicode, encodings, or binary data, as well as changes in file opening methods and exception handling. Tools like 2to3 can aid in the conversion process.