What's new and changed in Data Refinery

Data Refinery updates can include new features and fixes. Releases are listed in reverse chronological order so that the latest release is at the beginning of the topic.

You can see a list of the new features for the platform and all of the services at What's new in IBM Software Hub.

IBM® watsonx™ Version 2.1.2

A new version of Data Refinery was released in March 2025.

This release includes the following changes:

Updates

The following updates were introduced in this release:

Updates for environments for running Data Refinery flow jobs

The new Default Spark 3.4 & R 4.3 environment is added.
The Default Spark 3.4 & R 4.2 environment is deprecated and will be discontinued in a future update.
The Default Spark 3.3 & R 4.2 environment is discontinued

You can now select Default Spark 3.4 & R 4.3 when you select an environment for a Data Refinery flow job.

If you are upgrading from an earlier product version that has Data Refinery flow jobs that use a discontinued environment, a deprecated environment, or a custom Spark 3.x environment, change the jobs to use the new Default Spark 3.4 & R 4.3 environment. Use the new environment for new jobs.

For information about environments for Data Refinery, see Data Refinery environments.

The environment change affects two GUI operations. If you are upgrading from an earlier product version and you have Data Refinery flows that include these GUI operations, you must update the Data Refinery flow.

Split
Tokenize

To update a flow, open it and save it. For details, see Managing Data Refinery flows.

Customer-reported issues fixed in this release

For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data on the IBM Support website.

Deprecated features

The following features were deprecated or discontinued in this release:

Environments for running Data Refinery flow jobs

The Default Spark 3.4 & R 4.2 environment is deprecated and will be discontinued in a future update.
The Default Spark 3.3 & R 4.2 environment is discontinued

IBM watsonx Version 2.1.1

A new version of Data Refinery was released in February 2025.

This release includes the following changes:

Customer-reported issues fixed in this release: For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak for Data on the IBM Support website.

IBM watsonx Version 2.1.0

A new version of Data Refinery was released in December 2024.

This release includes the following changes:

New features

This release of Data Refinery includes the following features:

Schedule Data Refinery jobs in Git-based projects: You can now schedule jobs for Data Refinery jobs in Git-based projects. You can set up scheduling when you create the job.

Updates

The following updates were introduced in this release:

Improved documentation on write options for Data Refinery: The write options and table options for exporting data flows depends on your connection. These options are now explained so that you are better guided to select your target table options.
For more information, see Target connection options for Data Refinery.

Customer-reported issues fixed in this release: For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak for Data on the IBM Support website.