[ANNOUNCE] Apache Drill 1.21.0 Released

[James Turton <dz...@apache.org>]

On behalf of the Apache Drill community, I am happy to announce the 
release of Apache Drill 1.21.0.

Drill is an Apache open-source SQL query engine for Big Data exploration.
Drill is designed from the ground up to support high-performance analysis
on the semi-structured and rapidly evolving data coming from modern Big
Data applications, while still providing the familiarity and ecosystem of
ANSI SQL, the industry-standard query language. Drill provides
plug-and-play integration with existing Apache Hive and Apache HBase
deployments.

For information about Apache Drill, and to get involved, visit the 
project website [1].

Total of 110 JIRAs are resolved in this release of Drill with following
new features and improvements [2]:

  * A major upgrade of the parsing and planning library Calcite from
    1.21 to 1.33 enabled by the elimination of Drill’s fork of Calcite.
  * Upgrades of most format plugins to the internal EVF2 reader
    framework included support for provided schemas.
  * A new native Drill storage plugin enabling “Drill-on-Drill”
    federated deployments.
  * INSERT support, currently in the JDBC, Splunk and Google Sheets plugins.
  * New SQL syntax including filtered aggregates, PIVOT, UNPIVOT,
    INTERSECT and EXCEPT.
  * Support for new authentication modes in storage plugins including
    user translation for using different external credentials for
    different Drill users.
  * An overhaul of the implicit type casting logic for a more consistent
    user experience.
  * New functions and storage plugins including Delta Lake, Google
    Sheets, MS Access, threat hunting functions and statistical
    distribution functions.


For the full list please see release notes [3].

The binary and source artifacts are available here [4].

Thanks to everyone in the community who contributed to this release!

1. https://drill.apache.org/
2. https://drill.apache.org/blog/2023/02/21/drill-1.21.0-released/
3. https://drill.apache.org/docs/apache-drill-1-21-0-release-notes/
4. https://drill.apache.org/download/