corda/docs/source/changelog.rst

Changelog

Here's a summary of what's changed in each Corda release. For guidance on how to upgrade code from the previous release, see upgrade-notes.

Version 3.4

• Added a mode to the Class Carpenter where classes it cannot synthesise that are removed from an objects dependency graph by the evolution code no longer causes an error. This is a small enhancement to better facilitate compatibility with newer version of Corda. It allows Version 3 nodes to receive serialised forms of evolved types and cope with them in a more elegant way than previously.
• Serialization and class synthesis fixes.
• Documentation updates

Version 3.3

• Vault query fix: support query by parent classes of Contract State classes (see https://github.com/corda/corda/issues/3714)
• Fixed an issue preventing Shell from returning control to the user when CTRL+C is pressed in the terminal.
• Fixed a problem that sometimes prevented nodes from starting in presence of custom state types in the database without a corresponding type from installed CorDapps.
• Introduced a grace period before the initial node registration fails if the node cannot connect to the Doorman. It retries 10 times with a 1 minute interval in between each try. At the moment this is not configurable.
• Fixed an error thrown by NodeVaultService upon recording a transaction with a number of inputs greater than the default page size.
• Changes to the JSON/YAML serialisation format from JacksonSupport, which also applies to the node shell:
  • Instant and Date objects are serialised as ISO-8601 formatted strings rather than timestamps
  • PublicKey objects are serialised and looked up according to their Base58 encoded string
  • Party objects can be deserialised by looking up their public key, in addition to their name
  • NodeInfo objects are serialised as an object and can be looked up using the same mechanism as Party
  • NetworkHostAndPort serialised according to its toString()
  • PartyAndCertificate is serialised as the name
  • SerializedBytes is serialised by materialising the bytes into the object it represents, and then serialising that object into YAML/JSON
  • X509Certificate is serialised as an object with key fields such as issuer, publicKey, serialNumber, etc. The encoded bytes are also serialised into the encoded field. This can be used to deserialise an X509Certificate back.
  • CertPath objects are serialised as a list of X509Certificate objects.
• fullParties boolean parameter added to JacksonSupport.createDefaultMapper and createNonRpcMapper. If true then Party objects are serialised as JSON objects with the name and owningKey fields. For PartyAndCertificate the certPath is serialised.
• Several members of JacksonSupport have been deprecated to highlight that they are internal and not to be used
• ServiceHub and CordaRPCOps can now safely be used from multiple threads without incurring in database transaction problems.
• Fixed an issue preventing out of process nodes started by the Driver from logging to file.
• The Vault Criteria API has been extended to take a more precise specification of which class contains a field. This primarily impacts Java users; Kotlin users need take no action. The old methods have been deprecated but still work - the new methods avoid bugs that can occur when JPA schemas inherit from each other.
• Removed -xmx VM argument from Explorer's Capsule setup. This helps avoiding out of memory errors.
• Node will now gracefully fail to start if one of the required ports is already in use.
• Fixed incorrect exception handling in NodeVaultService._query().
• Avoided a memory leak deriving from incorrect MappedSchema caching strategy.
• Fix CORDA-1403 where a property of a class that implemented a generic interface could not be deserialised in a factory without a serialiser as the subtype check for the class instance failed. Fix is to compare the raw type.
• Fix CORDA-1229. Setter-based serialization was broken with generic types when the property was stored as the raw type, List for example.
• Table name with a typo changed from NODE_ATTCHMENTS_CONTRACTS to NODE_ATTACHMENTS_CONTRACTS.

Version 3.2

• Doorman and NetworkMap URLs can now be configured individually rather than being assumed to be the same server. Current compatibilityZoneURL configurations remain valid. See both corda-configuration-file and permissioning for details.
• Table name with a typo changed from NODE_ATTCHMENTS_CONTRACTS to NODE_ATTACHMENTS_CONTRACTS.

Version 3.1

• Update the fast-classpath-scanner dependent library version from 2.0.21 to 2.12.3

  Note

  Whilst this is not the latest version of this library, that being 2.18.1 at time of writing, versions later

  than 2.12.3 (including 2.12.4) exhibit a different issue.

• Updated the api scanner gradle plugin to work the same way as the version in master. These changes make the api scanner more accurate and fix a couple of bugs, and change the format of the api-current.txt file slightly. Backporting these changes to the v3 branch will make it easier for us to ensure that apis are stable for future versions. These changes are released in gradle plugins version 3.0.10. For more information on the api scanner see the documentation.

• Fixed security vulnerability when using the HashAttachmentConstraint. Added strict check that the contract JARs referenced in a transaction were deployed on the node.

• Fixed node's behaviour on startup when there is no connectivity to network map. Node continues to work normally if it has all the needed network data, waiting in the background for network map to become available.

Version 3.0

• Due to a security risk, the conflict property has been removed from NotaryError.Conflict error object. It has been replaced with consumedStates instead. The new property no longer specifies the original requesting party and transaction id for a consumed state. Instead, only the hash of the transaction id is revealed. For more details why this change had to be made please refer to the release notes.

• Added NetworkMapCache.getNodesByLegalName for querying nodes belonging to a distributed service such as a notary cluster where they all share a common identity. NetworkMapCache.getNodeByLegalName has been tightened to throw if more than one node with the legal name is found.

• Introduced Flow Draining mode, in which a node continues executing existing flows, but does not start new. This is to support graceful node shutdown/restarts. In particular, when this mode is on, new flows through RPC will be rejected, scheduled flows will be ignored, and initial session messages will not be consumed. This will ensure that the number of checkpoints will strictly diminish with time, allowing for a clean shutdown.

• Removed blacklisted word checks in Corda X.500 name to allow "Server" or "Node" to be use as part of the legal name.

• Separated our pre-existing Artemis broker into an RPC broker and a P2P broker.

• Refactored NodeConfiguration to expose NodeRpcOptions (using top-level "rpcAddress" property still works with warning).

• Modified CordaRPCClient constructor to take a SSLConfiguration? additional parameter, defaulted to null.

• Introduced CertificateChainCheckPolicy.UsernameMustMatchCommonName sub-type, allowing customers to optionally enforce username == CN condition on RPC SSL certificates.

• Modified DriverDSL and sub-types to allow specifying RPC settings for the Node.

• Modified the DriverDSL to start Cordformation nodes allowing automatic generation of "rpcSettings.adminAddress" in case "rcpSettings.useSsl" is false (the default).

• Introduced UnsafeCertificatesFactory allowing programmatic generation of X509 certificates for test purposes.

• JPA Mapping annotations for States extending CommonSchemaV1.LinearState and CommonSchemaV1.FungibleState on the participants collection need to be moved to the actual class. This allows to properly specify the unique table name per a collection. See: DummyDealStateSchemaV1.PersistentDummyDealState

• Database schema changes - an H2 database instance of Corda 1.0 and 2.0 cannot be reused for Corda 3.0, listed changes for Vault and Finance module:

  • NODE_TRANSACTIONS:

    column "TRANSACTION” renamed to TRANSACTION_VALUE, serialization format of BLOB stored in the column has changed to AMQP

  • VAULT_STATES:

    column CONTRACT_STATE removed

  • VAULT_FUNGIBLE_STATES:

    column ISSUER_REFERENCE renamed to ISSUER_REF and the field size increased

  • "VAULTSCHEMAV1$VAULTFUNGIBLESTATES_PARTICIPANTS":

    table renamed to VAULT_FUNGIBLE_STATES_PARTS, column "VAULTSCHEMAV1$VAULTFUNGIBLESTATES_OUTPUT_INDEX" renamed to OUTPUT_INDEX, column "VAULTSCHEMAV1$VAULTFUNGIBLESTATES_TRANSACTION_ID" renamed to TRANSACTION_ID

  • VAULT_LINEAR_STATES:

    type of column "UUID" changed from VARBINARY to VARCHAR(255) - select varbinary column as CAST("UUID" AS UUID) to get UUID in varchar format

  • "VAULTSCHEMAV1$VAULTLINEARSTATES_PARTICIPANTS":

    table renamed to VAULT_LINEAR_STATES_PARTS, column "VAULTSCHEMAV1$VAULTLINEARSTATES_OUTPUT_INDEX" renamed to OUTPUT_INDEX, column "VAULTSCHEMAV1$VAULTLINEARSTATES_TRANSACTION_ID" renamed to TRANSACTION_ID

  • contract_cash_states:

    columns storing Base58 representation of the serialised public key (e.g. issuer_key) were changed to store Base58 representation of SHA-256 of public key prefixed with DL

  • contract_cp_states:

    table renamed to cp_states, column changes as for contract_cash_states

• X.509 certificates now have an extension that specifies the Corda role the certificate is used for, and the role hierarchy is now enforced in the validation code. See net.corda.core.internal.CertRole for the current implementation until final documentation is prepared. Certificates at NODE_CA, WELL_KNOWN_SERVICE_IDENTITY and above must only ever by issued by network services and therefore issuance constraints are not relevant to end users. The TLS, WELL_KNOWN_LEGAL_IDENTITY roles must be issued by the NODE_CA certificate issued by the Doorman, and CONFIDENTIAL_IDENTITY certificates must be issued from a WELL_KNOWN_LEGAL_IDENTITY certificate. For a detailed specification of the extension please see permissioning.

• The network map service concept has been re-designed. More information can be found in network-map.

  • The previous design was never intended to be final but was rather a quick implementation in the earliest days of the Corda project to unblock higher priority items. It suffers from numerous disadvantages including lack of scalability, as one node is expected to hold open and manage connections to every node on the network; not reliable; hard to defend against DoS attacks; etc.
  • There is no longer a special network map node for distributing the network map to the other nodes. Instead the network map is now a collection of signed NodeInfo files distributed via HTTP.
  • The certificateSigningService config has been replaced by compatibilityZoneURL which is the base URL for the doorman registration and for downloading the network map. There is also an end-point for the node to publish its node-info object, which the node does each time it changes. networkMapService config has been removed.
  • To support local and test deployments, the node polls the additional-node-infos directory for these signed NodeInfo objects which are stored in its local cache. On startup the node generates its own signed file with the filename format "nodeInfo-*". This can be copied to every node's additional-node-infos directory that is part of the network.
  • Cordform (which is the deployNodes gradle task) does this copying automatically for the demos. The NetworkMap parameter is no longer needed.
  • For test deployments we've introduced a bootstrapping tool (see setting-up-a-corda-network).
  • extraAdvertisedServiceIds, notaryNodeAddress, notaryClusterAddresses and bftSMaRt configs have been removed. The configuration of notaries has been simplified into a single notary config object. See corda-configuration-file for more details.
  • Introducing the concept of network parameters which are a set of constants which all nodes on a network must agree on to correctly interop. These can be retrieved from ServiceHub.networkParameters.
  • One of these parameters, maxTransactionSize, limits the size of a transaction, including its attachments, so that all nodes have sufficient memory to validate transactions.
  • The set of valid notaries has been moved to the network parameters. Notaries are no longer identified by the CN in their X500 name.
  • Single node notaries no longer have a second separate notary identity. Their main identity is their notary identity. Use NetworkMapCache.notaryIdentities to get the list of available notaries.

  • Added NetworkMapCache.getNodesByLegalName for querying nodes belonging to a distributed service such as a notary cluster where they all share a common identity. NetworkMapCache.getNodeByLegalName has been tightened to throw if more than one node with the legal name is found.

  • The common name in the node's X500 legal name is no longer reserved and can be used as part of the node's name.
  • Moved NodeInfoSchema to internal package as the node info's database schema is not part of the public API. This was needed to allow changes to the schema.

• Support for external user credentials data source and password encryption [CORDA-827].

• Exporting additional JMX metrics (artemis, hibernate statistics) and loading Jolokia agent at JVM startup when using DriverDSL and/or cordformation node runner.

• Removed confusing property database.initDatabase, enabling its guarded behaviour with the dev-mode. In devMode Hibernate will try to create or update database schemas, otherwise it will expect relevant schemas to be present in the database (pre configured via DDL scripts or equivalent), and validate these are correct.

• AttachmentStorage now allows providing metadata on attachments upload - username and filename, currently as plain strings. Those can be then used for querying, utilizing queryAttachments method of the same interface.

• SSH Server - The node can now expose shell via SSH server with proper authorization and permissioning built in.

• CordaRPCOps implementation now checks permissions for any function invocation, rather than just when starting flows.

• wellKnownPartyFromAnonymous() now always resolve the key to a Party, then the party to the well known party. Previously if it was passed a Party it would use its name as-is without verifying the key matched that name.

• OpaqueBytes.bytes now returns a clone of its underlying ByteArray, and has been redeclared as final. This is a minor change to the public API, but is required to ensure that classes like SecureHash are immutable.

• Experimental support for PostgreSQL: CashSelection done using window functions

• FlowLogic now exposes a series of function called receiveAll(...) allowing to join receive(...) instructions.

• Renamed "plugins" directory on nodes to "cordapps"

• The Cordformation gradle plugin has been split into cordformation and cordapp. The former builds and deploys nodes for development and testing, the latter turns a project into a cordapp project that generates JARs in the standard CorDapp format.

• Cordapp now has a name field for identifying CorDapps and all CorDapp names are printed to console at startup.

• Enums now respect the whitelist applied to the Serializer factory serializing / deserializing them. If the enum isn't either annotated with the @CordaSerializable annotation or explicitly whitelisted then a NotSerializableException is thrown.

• Gradle task deployNodes can have an additional parameter configFile with the path to a properties file to be appended to node.conf.

• Cordformation node building DSL can have an additional parameter configFile with the path to a properties file to be appended to node.conf.

• FlowLogic now has a static method called sleep which can be used in certain circumstances to help with resolving contention over states in flows. This should be used in place of any other sleep primitive since these are not compatible with flows and their use will be prevented at some point in the future. Pay attention to the warnings and limitations described in the documentation for this method. This helps resolve a bug in Cash coin selection. A new static property currentTopLevel returns the top most FlowLogic instance, or null if not in a flow.

• CordaService annotated classes should be upgraded to take a constructor parameter of type AppServiceHub which allows services to start flows marked with the StartableByService annotation. For backwards compatability service classes with only ServiceHub constructors will still work.

• TimeWindow now has a length property that returns the length of the time-window as a java.time.Duration object, or null if the time-window isn't closed.

• A new SIGNERS_GROUP with ordinal 6 has been added to ComponentGroupEnum that corresponds to the Command signers.

• PartialMerkleTree is equipped with a leafIndex function that returns the index of a hash (leaf) in the partial Merkle tree structure.

• A new function checkCommandVisibility(publicKey: PublicKey) has been added to FilteredTransaction to check if every command that a signer should receive (e.g. an Oracle) is indeed visible.

• Changed the AMQP serialiser to use the oficially assigned R3 identifier rather than a placeholder.

• The ReceiveTransactionFlow can now be told to record the transaction at the same time as receiving it. Using this feature, better support for observer/regulator nodes has been added. See tutorial-observer-nodes.

• Added an overload of TransactionWithSignatures.verifySignaturesExcept which takes in a collection of PublicKeys.

• DriverDSLExposedInterface has been renamed to DriverDSL and the waitForAllNodesToFinish() method has instead become a parameter on driver creation.

• Values for the database.transactionIsolationLevel config now follow the java.sql.Connection int constants but without the "TRANSACTION" prefix, i.e. "NONE", "READ_UNCOMMITTED", etc.

• Peer-to-peer communications is now via AMQP 1.0 as default. Although the legacy Artemis CORE bridging can still be used by setting the useAMQPBridges configuration property to false.

• The Artemis topics used for peer-to-peer communication have been changed to be more consistent with future cryptographic agility and to open up the future possibility of sharing brokers between nodes. This is a breaking wire level change as it means that nodes after this change will not be able to communicate correctly with nodes running the previous version. Also, any pending enqueued messages in the Artemis message store will not be delivered correctly to their original target. However, assuming a clean reset of the artemis data and that the nodes are consistent versions, data persisted via the AMQP serializer will be forward compatible.

• The ability for CordaServices to register callbacks so they can be notified of shutdown and clean up resource such as open ports.

• Move to a message based control of peer to peer bridge formation to allow for future out of process bridging components. This removes the legacy Artemis bridges completely, so the useAMQPBridges configuration property has been removed.

• A CordaInternal attribute has been added to identify properties that are not intended to form part of the public api and as such are not intended for public use. This is alongside the existing DoNotImplement attribute for classes which provide Corda functionality to user applications, but should not be implemented by consumers, and any classes which are defined in .internal packages, which are also not for public use.

• Marked stateMachine on FlowLogic as CordaInternal to make clear that is it not part of the public api and is only for internal use

• Provided experimental support for specifying your own webserver to be used instead of the default development webserver in Cordform using the webserverJar argument

• Created new StartedMockNode and UnstartedMockNode classes which are wrappers around our MockNode implementation that expose relevant methods for testing without exposing internals, create these using a MockNetwork.

• The test utils in Expect.kt, SerializationTestHelpers.kt, TestConstants.kt and TestUtils.kt have moved from the net.corda.testing package to the net.corda.testing.core package, and FlowStackSnapshot.kt has moved to the net.corda.testing.services package. Moving existing classes out of the net.corda.testing.* package will help make it clearer which parts of the api are stable. Scripts have been provided to smooth the upgrade process for existing projects in the tools\scripts directory of the Corda repo.

• TransactionSignature includes a new partialMerkleTree property, required for future support of signing over multiple transactions at once.

• Updating Jolokia dependency to latest version (includes security fixes)