Vespa Product Updates, July 2021

In July 2021, Vespa.ai announced several key updates aimed at improving efficiency and functionality. HTTP/2 support was introduced for search and feed endpoints, enhancing network usage and security, and allowing efficient use of the document/v1 REST API alongside the Vespa HTTP client. Additionally, the integration of ONNX RUNTIME into the Vespa container enables the use of ONNX models with automatically generated REST APIs for stateless model serving, lightweight request handlers, and model evaluations for query processing, content transformation, and ranking phases. The Vespa Factory, an automated build and test system now open to the public, allows users to track performance improvements and inspect release changes. Vespa's capabilities, including approximate nearest neighbor filtering and real-time updates, were highlighted at the Berlin Buzzwords 2021 conference, showcasing its application in various fields. Developed largely by Yahoo engineers, Vespa is a versatile open-source big data processing engine used by several Yahoo products and the Verizon Media Ad Platform, continuing to grow with community feedback and contributions.