What's new and changed in Streams

The IBM® Streams release and subsequent refreshes can include new features, bug fixes, and security updates. Refreshes appear in reverse chronological order, and only the refreshes that contain updates for Streams are shown.

You can see a list of the new features for the platform and all of the services at What's new?

Installing or upgrading Streams

Ready to install or upgrade Streams?

Related documentation:

Refresh 2 of Cloud Pak for Data Version 3.5

Released: January 2021

A new version of Streams was released in January 2021.

Assembly version: 5.5.1

This release includes the following changes:

New features

You must install Version 5.5.1 of the Streams service if you want to install the service on Red Hat® OpenShift® 4.6.

In addition this release also includes the following features and updates:

Default settings for data throughput

You can configure the default application service resource CPU and memory settings to handle your data throughput. You can configure these settings by editing the Streams instance details in the Cloud Pak for Data web client.

Data retrieval endpoint improvements

If you use data retrieval endpoints for one-time use data, you can configure the endpoint operator to remove buffered data as it is read. Removing the buffered data can help with scalability and allow for simpler client API code. To configure the endpoint, you use the new consumingReads parameter on the EndpointSink operator.

REST API improvements

To support greater interoperability with other data sources, the application service REST API now supports the following features:

User-configurable list names
Non-list data item input
Additional options for how data items are returned

Manage access to Streams application services

You can manage access to Streams application services from the Instances list in the Cloud Pak for Data web client.

For details, see Streams application services.

Initial release of Cloud Pak for Data Version 3.5

A new version of Streams was released as part of Cloud Pak for Data Version 3.5.

Assembly version: 5.5.0

This release includes the following changes:

New features

Application resource customization

You can customize the resources that are used by your application. You can:

Create a custom application image for dependencies, such as software packages or libraries, that are not included in the default application image.
Customize the resources, such as CPU or memory, that your Streams applications use by creating custom application resource templates.

For more information, see Customizing the application image.

Production workload management and monitoring

The Deployment spaces page provides a dashboard that you can use to monitor and manage Streams jobs in multiple deployment spaces.

Edge Analytics 1.1.0 beta integration

OpenShift image build integration: You can build a Docker image loaded with your streaming data application, ready for Edge Analytics deployment. For more information, see Packaging an Edge Analytics application or service for deployment.
Enhanced development environments: Use your favorite Streams development environment (streamsx Python API, notebooks, or Visual Studio Code) to build your edge application and image. For more information, see Developing edge applications with IBM Edge Analytics.
Enhanced Streams standalone applications: Application metrics, such as data tuple counters, operator costs, and user-defined metrics, can be exposed and the default threading model can be specified for standalone Streams applications.
Edge-aware samples: Explore new application samples designed for the edge.

Streams jobs as Cloud Pak for Data services

This release introduces the ability to enable a Streams job as a Cloud Pak for Data service. A streams-application service can be used to insert data into and retrieve data from a Streams job. A streams-application service is created by inserting one or more endpoint operators into an application and submitting the application to run as a job. Exchanging data with the job is done by using a REST API. The streams-application service instances are included in the Services > Instances page of the Cloud Pak for Data web client. Selecting a service entry in the list opens the REST API documentation for the service.

For additional information, restrictions, and sample applications, see Resources for Streams developers in the IBM Community.