metabase/metabase v0.42.0-rc2

Metabase v0.42.0-rc2

on GitHub

This release introduces Models, and ships with a lot of improvements, polish, and bug fixes. We'll talk a lot more about these features for the release, but for now here's a preview of what's new:

Models

Models are a new fundamental building block in Metabase that let you create metadata-rich derived tables for people to explore. The idea is to make it easier to create starting points for people to ask questions, like a model that pulls together information about customers from multiple tables.

To create a model, create a question using either the query builder or the native SQL editor, save it, and convert it to a model (from the sidebar). You can add metadata for each column (especially useful for models created from SQL questions), and edit the underlying query. People will be able to select models in the data picker as the starting point for new questions, and you can place models in collections for people to discover.

A "new" navigation menu

You can now just click on + New to create a question using the query builder, a SQL query, a dashboard, or a collection. And we made the Browse data button more prominent to encourage people to poke around your connected databases. We have a lot more planned here for making it easier to find the data you're looking for, so stay tuned.

Updated Slack integration

Metabase now uses the Slack app API to handle its Slack application (Slack had deprecated the previous bot integration).

Revamped custom expressions editor

Writing custom expressions just got a lot snappier: lots of improvements under the hood. Autocomplete suggestions are much faster, and the functions, aggregations, and fields are labeled by type for easy scanning.

Waterfall, area, progress, and combo charts added for dashboard subscriptions

Continuing our work on improving dashboards subscriptions, we made two more charts available to email and Slack messages: waterfall and progress charts, and made sure charts with multiple series now display them all. We also added more polish to the formatting, colors, and fonts for the static charts Metabase sends.

Improved summarize sidebar

When you close and reopen the Summarize sidebar in the query builder, it'll keep all of your summarizations and groupings in one place so they're easier to edit. We've also added some small UI touches to field selection that makes adding new summarizations and groupings more intuitive.

Better revision histories for questions

We cleaned up the entries in questions so it's easier to see at a glance how a question has changed over time (and who changed it).

Refined filters

We touched up our calendar date selector as well as the "between" date range selector for our filter widgets, and hardened the security on filters used with questions built with the query builder.

New database setup interface

We spruced up the UI that walks people through connecting Metabase to a data source (like your PostgreSQL database).

Option to disable animations

Animations can cause people with vestibular disorders to experience vertigo, so we made Metabase compatible with the Operating System setting prefers-reduced-motion.

Connect to a secure PostgreSQL and Oracle database server using a truststore and/or keystore

You can now provide a keystore and/or a truststore to connect to an Oracle or PostgreSQL database server that someone else (like your database administrator) has secured. Note that some cloud providers only support client authentication with a truststore, so keystores would have no effect. You can also take advantage of PostgreSQL's SSL-mode.

More control over which BigQuery datasets to sync

We have added a new feature that gives more granular control over which BigQuery datasets will (or won’t) be synced.

We've added Snowplow to help us collect anonymous data

For our opt-in anonymous data collection (which helps us improve and troubleshoot Metabase—thanks to those who opt in), we've added Snowplow to capture more in-app events.

Here is the full list of enhancements and bug fixes:

Enhancements

• the Time picker AM and PM color can not be distinguished obviously (#20010)
• Alert Stopped email is Unhelpful (#19814)
• Clean up database guide usability during configuration (#19641)
• Add a way to return to previous page from sign in cases (#19476)
• Consolidate first db sync modal and X-ray selection (#19440)
• Migrate Slack implementation from Bot to App (#19435)
• Improve Filters (#19354)
• Clean Up Settings Navigation (#19348)
• Enable users to invite teammates with db credentials in set up (#19247)

Bug fixes

• Pins do not appear on pin map (#20090)
• "Explore results" shown for no-data users resulting in blank screen when clicked (#20044)
• Blank screen when accessing Models with no-data user (#20042)
• Licensing page goes into reload-loop if token is expired (#20020)
• Descriptions missing in search results (#20018)
• Horizontal scroll of pinned table doesn't work on Firefox (#19997)
• Metadata tooltip popup on colum header casues data table to reset for number columns that are all NULLs (#19976)
• Certain visualization_settings can cause empty/missing columns on export (#19889)
• Postgres unnecessarily casts timestamptz and date columns to timestamp inside date_trunc() (#19816)
• Exports ignore column ordering regression in v0.41.6 (#19796)
• Premature calls to to-sql inside sql.qp/->honeysql methods (#19753)
• Visualization "auto-viz" doesn't keep existing settings, when changing fields returned (#19747)
• Can't add a filter if the value isn't in the field filters dropdown (#19685)
• defsetting :tag metadata should be on the arglists themselves, not the var (#19627)
• SQLite/Redshift/SQL Server/MySQL queries don't work correctly with multiple column aliases with same name but different case (#19618)
• Archived sub-collections are still showing in Permissions (#19603)
• XLSX exports are leaving temporary files, which can block instance from working (#19480)
• Disable "Nested queries" not honored in GUI data selector search or on SQL questions (#19341)

Upgrading

You can download a .jar of the release, or get the latest on Docker. Make sure to back up your Metabase
database before you upgrade! Need help? Check out our
upgrading instructions.

Docker image: metabase/metabase:v0.42.0-rc2
Download the JAR here: https://downloads.metabase.com/v0.42.0-rc2/metabase.jar

Notes

SHA-256 checksum for the 0.42.0-rc2 JAR:

f7d48b3dab9bebdbac2f492bf50ca41809002e8613661db625b026f435d2227f