What's New in Zen v17

The release of Zen v17, version 17.00, offers the following new features and changes:

• Supported Platforms and Deprecated Features

This document may be updated after the release. Download the latest version from the Actian Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) website or visit docs.actian.com.

Zen AI with Vector Data Engine

Zen v17 introduces two new editions: Zen AI Enterprise Server and Zen AI Cloud Server, both of which include the Vector Data Engine. This new Zen database engine supports the Actian VectorAI DB functionality of gRPC access, REST API, and dashboard. For more information, see Zen AI Overview in the VectorAI DB online documentation.

In addition, Zen v17 introduces new SQL functions to support vector data collections. These functions enable the creating and dropping of collections, the inserting, updating, and deleting of data rows in collections, and searching based on vector data characteristics. For details, see Vector Collection Functions in SQL Engine Reference.

ADO.NET Support

The Zen v17 ADO.NET SDK offers the following updates:

• Entity Framework Core 10

• .NET 10

• Visual Studio 2026 plugin

• Windows Server 2025 support

For more information, see the Zen Data Providers for ADO.NET online documentation at docs.actian.com and the release notes for ADO.NET Data Providers for .NET Framework and for ADO.NET Core Data Provider and Entity Framework Core Data Provider for .NET Standard, which you can download at the Actian Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) website.

Other Improvements

Zen v17 offers selected improvements and fixes, including the following:

• A new virtual column called sys$usage, which returns a usage count for use with sys$create and sys$update time stamps to indicate how many times a given record has changed since it was inserted.

• Low-, medium-, and high-level wire encryption keys have been raised to 128, 192, and 256 bits, respectively.

• For SQL query logs, users can now choose a directory other than the default C:\ProgramData\Actian\Zen\Logs.

• The Linux engine is transitioning its logging directory from actianzen/log to actianzen/logs to be more consistent with the Windows engine. In this release, the zen.log and vectorai.log files appear in the logs directory.

Supported Platforms and Deprecated Features

• This release adds support for Windows Server 2025.

• This release drops support for Windows Server 2016.

• For other information about supported platforms, visit communities.actian.com for a list of platforms currently supported by Zen.

• This release drops support for Linux ClientAccess (32-bit client).

• This release drops support for SQL Access for COBOL applications (cobolschemaexec).

History Log and Known Issues List

• An updated Zen history log lists fixed defects and selected enhancements in Zen v17.

• An updated Zen known issues log lists unresolved technical and usage issues, with workarounds when available.

• You can download both of these files, as well as Zen v17 release notes and this What’s New document, at the Actian Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) website.

Documentation

The documentation for this release has been updated to cover new or changed functionality. It has also been revised for clarity, grammar, spelling, and changes to internet addresses and product names.

Last modified date: 08/05/2026