An asterisk (*) indicates support that was added in a hotfix or software patch subsequent to a release.

Refer to the following resources for additional information:

• Product Compatibility Guide: Provides the latest data source and platform support information. 
• Fixes: Describes the issues resolved since general availability.  

Version 6.0.0

Enhancements

• The driver has been enhanced to comply with FIPS standards for data encryption. As part of this enhancement, the driver was tested with FIPS 140-3 enabled using a Red Hat OpenJDK 21 on a Red Hat Universal Base Image 9 instance. Refer to FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) for details.*
  Available: 1/31/2025 | 6.0.0.000680
• The driver has been enhanced to connect using secure connect bundles, which contain security certificates and credentials for your database. You can configure your driver to use secure connect bundles by specifying the location of the .zip file using the new SecureConnectBundle property. For details, refer to SecureConnectBundle.*
  Note that secure connect bundles are only supported by certain databases, such as DataStax Enterprise running in IBM Cloud. Refer to your database documentation for support information.
• The driver has been enhanced to include timestamp in the Spy and JDBC packet
  logs by default. If required, you can disable the timestamp logging by
  specifying the following at connection: For Spy logs, set
  spyAttributes=(log=(file)Spy.log;timestamp=no) and for JDBC packet logs,
  set ddtdbg.ProtocolTraceShowTime=false.
• Interactive SQL for JDBC (JDBCISQL) is now installed with the product. JDBCISQL is a command-line interface that supports connecting your driver to a data source, executing SQL statements and retrieving results in a terminal. This tool provides a method to quickly test your drivers in an environment that does not support GUIs.*
• The driver has been enhanced to support the Duration data type, which maps to the Varchar JDBC type. Currently, the Duration type is supported only in simple columns, and not in Collection types. For details, refer to Data Types.*
• The driver has been enhanced to support all the data consistency levels for read and write operations that are supported by Apache Cassandra data stores. Data consistency levels are configured using the ReadConsistency and WriteConsistency connection properties. For details, refer to ReadConsistency and WriteConsistency.*
• The driver has been enhanced to support SSL data encryption. For details, refer to Configuring SSL Encryption.*
• The driver has been enhanced to support Kerberos authentication. For details, refer to Configuring the Driver for Kerberos Authentication.*
• The driver has been enhanced to support Cassandra's tunable consistency functionality with the ReadConsistency and WriteConsistency connection
  properties. For details, refer to ReadConsistency and WriteConsistency.*
• The driver has been enhanced to improve the handling of large result sets and
  reduce the likelihood of out-of-memory errors through the introduction of the
  FetchSize, NativeFetchSize, and ResultMemorySize connection properties. For details, refer to Connection Property Descriptions.*

Changed Behavior

• The installer program now requires you to install a JRE that is Java SE 11 or higher before running the installer. In earlier versions, the JRE used by the installer program was included in the product. However, to avoid potential security vulnerabilities, the installer program no longer includes a JRE. Instead, the installer program uses the JRE in your environment to allow for the most secure version of a JRE to be used.*
  Note: This change does not affect the JVM requirements for the driver. For the latest driver requirements, refer to the Product Compatibility Guide.
  Available: 7/3/2024

GA Release Features

• Supports SQL read-write access to Apache Cassandra
• Generates a normalized view of Cassandra data. Tuple and user-defined types are flattened into a relational parent table, while collection types are mapped as relational child tables.
• Supports Native and Refresh escape sequences to embed CQL commands in SQL-92 statements.
• Includes the TransactionMode connection property which allows you to configure the driver to report that it supports transactions, even though Cassandra does not support transactions. This provides a workaround for applications that do not operate with a driver that reports transactions are not supported.
• Support for Binary Large Objects (BLOBs)
• Support for connection pooling
• Support for statement pooling
• Includes the LoginTimeout connection property which allows you to specify how long the driver waits for a connection to be established before timing out the connection request.