UNICODE type conversions (such as calling ctdbGetFieldAsUTF16() on string fields) had previously assumed that the string was UTF-8. 

These conversions now use field encoding or working charset information to determine the encoding type and will fail with error CTDBRET_INVCHARSET if this information is not present.

String field encodings can be set using ctdbSetFieldStringEncoding, and retrieved using ctdbGetFieldStringEncoding.

For more details, see the compatibility and migration guidelines in Internationalization Support. 

ctdbSetFieldStringEncoding now enforces use of known charsets.

Use IANA character set names. 

ctdbGetFieldDefaultValue now has a return type of const TEXT *. As a result, previously existing calls to this function may get compile time errors.

Adjust previously existing calls so that they match the declaration syntax shown here.

By default, when JSON DB creates tables, it now uses a padding character of 32 and a field delimiter of 32. It also returns CHAR fields as fixed-length, space-padded strings. These changes were made to promote compatibility with SQL. 

Previously, JSON DB did not define how fixed-length strings were padded, and defaulted to using NULL (0x00) characters for padding and field delimiters.

If this is not your desired behavior, you can change it using the “padValue” and "fieldDelimiterValue" properties upon table creation, and the "fixedLengthCharFormat" property when querying data from a table. 

In JSON DB, each index created now has its own file.

Previously, multiple created indexes would typically share the same index file.

SQL is not impacted; it still creates one file on disk for each index, like before.

FairCom clients and servers now support configurable password hash algorithms (such as PBKDF2) and scalable password hash difficulty. This strengthens the hashing algorithm we use to store passwords in the database, making password-based authentication more secure against offline brute force attacks. This change affects all Edge and SQL clients. 

This change can become breaking if you turn on password hash support using PASSWORD_HASH without using a client that supports the hash algorithm configured by the server. 

To support this change, we now automatically upgrade older versions of FAIRCOM.FCS at startup. Thus, FAIRCOM.FCS cannot be downgraded for use with prior server versions. 

If you do not wish to use scalable difficulty hash algorithms, leave PASSWORD_HASH set to its default value of ORIGINAL. 

If you wish to use them, use a client that supports the hash algorithm you want to configure. See PASSWORD_HASH for more details. 

The change to FAIRCOM.FCS will not cause problems as long as you back it up before upgrading, as should be standard practice. 

ctChecklock is now enabled on all files by default, so we do not allow a connection to update a record if it has not been locked (the attempt will fail with error 57). This safeguards against potential crashes/hangs when freeing unclaimed locks.

Previously, when using ctdbSetBatchFilter to add a record filter to a batch, the filter could be applied to other record handles you used while the batch was active.

Now, the filter will apply only to the record that the batch refers to.