Release Summary > New Features in Actian Ingres 12.1
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New Features in Actian Ingres 12.1
 
Modern. Secure. Connected.
Modern. Secure. Connected.
Actian Ingres 12.1 is a hybrid database management system that combines a mature transactional engine (enterprise-ready Ingres) with a high-speed columnar analytics engine (X100). This release embeds open standards directly into the system to deliver enterprise-grade security, real-time data streaming, and modern observability.
Enterprise Security and Compliance
Target Audience: CISO, Security Architects
Native Data-at-Rest Encryption
Delivering transparent data encryption capabilities, this feature encrypts all database files, transaction logs, and Journal files. It secures PII and sensitive data on disk without requiring changes to your applications, making it essential for compliance and deployments in untrusted environments. See Using Data Encryption.
TLS 1.3 Network Security
Upgrades client-server communication to industry-standard TLS 1.3, utilizing X509 certificates to prevent Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. See Using Secure Communications Encryption with TLS.
Federated Identity Management (FIM)
Modernizes authentication by delegating to Identity Providers (IdP) through OpenID Connect or OAuth 2.0, removing reliance on OS-level users. See Implementing FIM.
Password Policies
Configurable rules for complexity/containment and Denial of Service (DoS) throttling to prevent brute-force attacks. See Password Policy Configuration.
Lock Encrypted Database without Passphrase
Database owners can instantly secure an encrypted database during emergencies by disabling access without requiring the passphrase. See DISABLE PASSPHRASE.
Change Data Capture and Observability
Target Audience: Data Architects, DevOps
Log Reader API
Java API that enables real-time streaming of database transactions for custom or partner solutions, such as Kafka, Apache Spark, Memcached, and ElasticSearch. See Change Data Capture.
Real-Time Change Data Capture (CDC)
Debezium provides homogeneous and heterogeneous replication capabilities for Ingres, and enables database transactions for publishing directly into Kafka. A new Debezium connector is currently available in incubator status at debezium.io.
Actian Monitor (OpenTelemetry)
A containerized monitoring stack built on OpenTelemetry (OTel) standards. It integrates seamlessly with Prometheus for metrics storage and Grafana for rich visualization of database health. See Installing Actian Monitor.
SQL Functions and Developer Features
Target Audience: Application Developers, SQL Programmers
Feature/Function
Description
Engine Support
TRANSLATE
Replaces a sequence of characters in a string with another sequence. See TRANSLATE.
Transactional, Analytical
SUBSTRING_INDEX
Allows to search for substrings within a string (already supported with X100 tables). Enhanced with delimiter_orientation to control search direction. See SUBSTRING_INDEX.
Transactional, Analytical
IS DATE / IS TIME
Predicates to validate if a value can be converted to Date/Time types (now supported with X100 tables). See IS DATE/IS ANSIDATE Predicate and IS TIME Predicate.
Transactional, Analytical
Database Comments
Ability to add descriptive comments directly at the database level. See COMMENT ON DATABASE.
Transactional
Jaro_Winkler for X100
Calculates the Jaro_Winkler similarity between two strings c1 and c2 and returns the float value between 0 and 1. See JARO_WINKLER.
Analytical (Previously Transactional only)
LIKE Columnar Patterns
Column names can now be specified as LIKE patterns (for example, WHERE col1 LIKE col2). See LIKE Predicate.
Analytical
AES_ENCRYPT_BINARY_IV
Application-level encryption supporting VARBYTE values matching existing Ingres functionality. See Encryption Functions.
Transactional,Analytical
AES_DECRYPT_BINARY_IV
Application-level decryption supporting VARBYTE values matching existing Ingres functionality. See Encryption Functions.
Transactional,Analytical
INSERT ... EXTERNAL CSV
Supports a HEADER flag to include column headers in exports. See INSERT INTO EXTERNAL CSV (X100 Only).
Analytical
CREATE TABLE ... CLONE
Supports WITH LOCATION=(...) to clone tables to specific storage locations (supported only with X100 tables). See WITH OPTIONS for Table Cloning.
Analytical
Ingres Server Administration
Target Audience: Database Administrators
Unified Container Management (Dockman)
A new utility that creates a unified interface for managing Docker-based extensions (UDFs, Spark integrations, TensorFlow) across both Windows and Linux. See Containerized Services.
System Info
An update to dbmsinfo() function to retrieve user and client names. See DBMSINFO Function.
Predefined UDFs
New tools, iisugetudflib and import_udflib to deploy standard ML data pre-processing UDF. See Predefined UDFs for ML Preprocessing.
X100 Acceleration for Direct-read Against Native Ingres Tables (Preview)
Run high-speed X100 analytical queries directly on native Ingres tables, without requiring any data movement.
Time Zone with Timestamp
All Ingres log files include the time zone and the corresponding timestamp.
Transaction Log File Encryption
Configuration-By-Forms (CBF) is able to configure Transaction Log File Encryption.
X100 Analytics Engine Enhancements
Target Audience: Data Scientists, BI Developers
Performance and Cloud Resilience
Cloud Checkpoints
Enhanced data resilience for X100 tables running in Cloud environments. Cloud backup has been enabled for X100 journaled databases.
Runtime Memory Adjustment
Dynamically resize Bufferpool and Query Memory without restarting X100 services.
X100 Acceleration for Direct-read Against Native Ingres Tables (Preview)
Ingres 12.1 introduces a 'direct-read' capability, allowing the analytical engine to transparently process queries against row-store tables, effectively bringing the compute to the data.
Advanced Data Types and Compression
Binary Data Support
X100 tables now fully support BYTE and VARBYTE data types (previously a limitation). See see X100 Supported Data Types and Binary Data Types.
Boolean Conversion
Native conversion from BYTE/VARBYTE to BOOLEAN is now supported. See BOOLEAN.
LZ4 Compression
Support for "lz4" or "auto" compression hints on BYTE/VARBYTE columns. See Function-based Encryption (Application-level Encryption), Encryption Functions, Data Compression, and [cbm] Settings.
Configuration Updates
Session Control
SET callx100verbose (Default): Prints CALL X100 output to the monitor.
SET callx100silent: Suppresses output. See CALLX100VERBOSE | CALLX100SILENT and CALL X100 (X100 Only).
Update Propagation
Enhanced to prioritize Insert-Only Update Propagation (IOUP), improve trigger thresholds/retries, and ensure data consistency on shutdown. See PDT Parameters.
Advanced ETL
Advanced External Table Staging
Now supports specifying multiple SparkSQL statements or full Scala scripts for complex ETL. It is supported on X100 only. See CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE (X100 Only).
Machine Learning (ML) Integration
TensorFlow Integration
Native workflow support to deploy ML models for prediction directly within the database (Linux only). A new command, iisutensorflow, manages TensorFlow UDF container image configuration. See iisutensorflow Command--Manage TensorFlow UDF Container Image and Configuring Machine Learning Models (MLM).
Spark and Scala UDFs
Scala is a supported UDF language. A new command, iisuspark, downloads and configures the Spark provider container. See iisuspark Command--Download Spark Container Image and Configure Scala UDF Container Image and see Setting up Actian Spark for Use with Ingres.
Model Management
A new statement option, HELP MODEL, displays detailed information about specified ML models. It adds support for scoring/inference using popular ML libraries. See HELP.
Infrastructure and Platform Support
Target Audience: System Administrators, Infrastructure Engineers
Operating Systems
• Linux (RHEL 8.10/9.6/10.0, SUSE 15-SP7+)
• Windows (11, 2022, 2025)
Container Support
A new containerized image (based on Ubuntu LTS 22.04) is available specifically for Kubernetes orchestration.
Dependencies
• Core: glibc 2.28+, OpenSSL 3.0+, libxml2 2.9.1+
• Developer Runtimes: Python 3.12, NumPy 2.2.6, TensorFlow 2.16+, JavaScript mozjs-102, Apache Hadoop 3.3.6
Client Connectivity and Interoperability
Target Audience: Integrators, Application Maintainers
OpenROAD 12.0 Compatibility
Requirement
OpenROAD 12.0 (Patch 16044 or higher).
Connection Strategies
Ingres Net (Non-TLS): Uses standard RSA+AES encryption.
Shared Installation (TLS): Installs OpenROAD 12.0 in the same II_SYSTEM as Ingres 12.1 for native TLS support.
Bridge Server (iigcb): Recommended for connecting older or non-TLS clients to TLS-enabled servers.
Certified Components
• Actian Client Runtime: 1.4.0
• Actian Director: 2.4.4 (Not yet supported for TLS connections)
• Enterprise Monitoring Appliance (EMA): 4.2.2
• DBA Tools: 12.1.0-104-win-x86_64
• Spark Provider: 4.2.2
• Actian Monitor: 1.0.1
Last modified date: 01/29/2026