A couple of weeks passed after our big 2.0 launch, but we didn’t stop adding cool new features to Memgraph. For this release, we focused on providing you with more options for ingesting your data into Memgraph, and we also enhanced the existing methods. Moreover, we enriched the details of using Memgraph itself, making it simpler than ever to work with.

On Wednesday, December 1st, we will be holding a live demo for the new Memgraph release. If you don’t want to wait for the live stream, check out this video by our CTO Marko 👇

New kids on the block - Pulsar and Redpanda

Even though Kafka is by far the most popular option for a streaming platform, it’s not the only one. The streaming world is a growing field with a couple of interesting solutions to your streaming problems.

First comes Pulsar. We added native support inside Memgraph for connecting to your Pulsar cluster. Process the messages in the same way as you can with Kafka, by defining a transformation procedure and running a couple of queries. Try it out using our example, and don’t forget to check the reference guide.

By supporting Kafka, we had to check Redpanda, which claims to be a Kafka API compatible streaming platform. Luckily, that statement is 100% true, allowing you to connect your Redpanda cluster using our Kafka client. If you think your Kafka cluster is slow, try Redpanda with Memgraph and tell us what you think.

More control over your streams

We added a new built-in procedure called mg.kafka_set_stream_offset that allows you to set the offset for the topics of your Kafka connection. No need to use external tools when you can do it straight from Memgraph.

When your messages are processed, they generate queries that are run as part of a transaction. If that transaction was in conflict with another transaction, the processing would fail and stop. Those situations can be annoying, so we decided to retry those transactions automatically a set amount of times. You can control the number of retries and the interval of the retries yourself using newly added configs, --stream-transaction-conflict-retries and --stream-transaction-retry-interval.

Am I running queries correctly?

One of the biggest things missing while using Memgraph is any kind of feedback when a query is executed successfully. We added two things to the query summary to solve that problem:

• the stats about the modifications done by the query
• notifications that give you extra information and tips for certain queries

Currently, you can extract that information manually from the summary, but this allows us to improve our CLI tool, mgconsole, and Memgraph Lab.

Other changes and fixes

There are some smaller things we fixed and introduced into Memgraph, which include the following:

• added support for Bolt 4.3
• added BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS as config in CREATE KAFKA STREAM query
• allowing temporal types to be used as weights in Weighted Shortest Path
• fixed crash when using temporal types with ORDER BY clause

For more details, check out our Change Log.

What’s next?

Go and try it out! You can download the Memgraph 2.1 version here. We will also hold a live demo next week with our founders, Marko and Dominik. Be sure to tune in!

If you spot any bugs or generally weird behavior, please drop us a line on our issues page and forum. And remember, if you need any kind of information about Memgraph, the documentation site will always be by your side.

We also invite you to join our Discord Server and stay informed on everything Memgraph related!

Happy hacking!