Dear Ignite Community! I'd like to propose that we start preparing the Apache Ignite 2.19 release. Master has moved a long way since 2.18 was branched in late April: more than 600 commits, and several of them are significant changes for users. I think it's time to deliver them. Main release drivers
1. Calcite is the default SQL engine. Starting with 2.19, the Calcite-based engine becomes the default SQL engine. The H2-based engine stays available through configuration. Calcite has also become much more capable during this cycle: * window functions (IGNITE-14777); * recursive CTEs, including UNION DISTINCT, ORDER BY and the form without the RECURSIVE keyword (IGNITE-27822 and follow-ups); * SELECT ... FOR UPDATE (IGNITE-28724); * UDF/UDTF overloading, custom aggregate functions via plugins, pluggable grammar and SQL semantics customization; * FROM DUAL, REGEXP_SUBSTR/REGEXP_EXTRACT, expressions in FETCH/OFFSET/LIMIT; * Calcite 1.42 and a number of correctness fixes (Merge Join, EXCEPT, large IN lists and others). 1. Spring 6 and a dependency refresh. We moved to Spring 6.2 and Jetty 12, and updated Jackson, Log4j2, ZooKeeper/Curator, compression libraries and more. Dependabot now keeps our dependencies up to date. 2. JDK 17 is the minimum version, and JDK 21 is supported. Ignite 2.19 will require Java 17 or later. I also propose that we officially declare JDK 21 support. A number of JDK 21 compatibility fixes have already landed in master. Experimental features * Multi-DC. It includes DC-aware discovery, parallel pinging of remote-DC nodes during connection recovery, partition distribution metrics for MDC deployments, and documentation. Other notable changes * savepoints for Key-Value, SQL and JDBC transactions; * new system views and metrics; * new control.sh commands: Proposed timeline (to be discussed): * Scope freeze: 11.10.2026 * Code freeze: 25.10.2026 * Voting date: 19.11.2026 * Release Date: 27.11.2026 I'm ready to take on the main work of the release as the release manager for 2.19. Evgeny Stanilovsky has kindly agreed to help me with the release on behalf of the community. Please share your opinions, objections, and any tickets you think must be included in 2.19 or can't wait for the next release Best regards, Aleksandr Nikolaev
