Overview
Over the coming weeks, Cumulocity Streaming Analytics will switch to a new “26.x” version of the Apama engine. The new release is focused around the real-world needs of Cumulocity customers, delivering a simplified and more relevant feature set. Non-Cumulocity users of Apama are expected to remain on the 10.15 release line.
The new version includes some installation and third party changes that may affect customers with their own custom EPL or connectivity plug-ins, as well as those who build and test analytics applications using their own installation of Apama (for example, on Windows).
We expect that most applications will be unaffected. However if you use custom Python or Java plug-ins in an Analytics Builder Block that you have uploaded to the apama-ctrl microservice, it’s important to prepare for these changes immediately, so you are ready when the update is rolled out to SaaS environments over the coming weeks.
If you use Apama in a Cumulocity custom microservice there is less urgency, but you should plan to switch to the latest (26.x) base image at some point over the next year.
Release Changes
Windows support
Installation is no longer supported on Windows, and therefore the Apama plug-in for Eclipse is no longer provided.
- Instead, to work with Apama applications on Windows (for example to build EPL Apps, execute the Block SDK, or build PySys tests for your application), you can use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to create a Debian instance, then install Apama using our Debian Package Repository.
- For an environment to develop your EPL applications and blocks, instead of Eclipse you can use the community-maintained Apama Extension for Visual Studio Code (for example, using an Apama installation in WSL).
- If you are using Windows for an automated CI/CD workflow, we advise switching to our Debian-based Docker images.
Docker base image update
The Apama Docker images now use Debian 12 (Bookworm) for the base image instead of Red Hat UBI. These images can be used for both development and as a base image for custom Cumulocity microservices. The names and tags of some Docker images have changed, as has the directory where Apama is installed. If you need to install any extra packages on your image, the command line for doing so will need to be changed for Debian.
Supported operating systems changes
For users who need to install Apama onto a Linux machine without docker, the installation options have changed. Debian is now the only supported distribution for installing Apama, and the Apama packages must be installed from our Debian Package Repository as we no longer publish .zip or .tar.gz packages. Support for installing Apama on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu is removed. In addition to the usual x86 packages, support for ARMv8 (64-bit) has been added and replaces ARMv7HF (32-bit).
Java upgrade
This release of Apama comes with Java 17 instead of Java 11. All Java code executed within the correlator is now executed with Java 17, so if you have any custom EPL plug-ins or connectivity plug-ins you should recompile them with Java 17 and test that they are still working as expected. If you use Java in a block uploaded to an apama-ctrl microservice, any required changes should be performed immediately so you are ready when the update is rolled out to SaaS environments.
See online resources such as the JDK release notes for detailed information about breaking changes and new features in Java 17. Some applications may be affected by the different locale data provided in this version of Java, or may require updates to third party library dependencies, but we expect that in most cases Apama plug-ins will continue to work without changes.
Python upgrade
Python will soon be upgraded from 3.9 to a newer version (likely 3.13). We advise customers using Python to review What’s New in Python to familiarise themselves with any changes that may affect their application. If Python is being used within a block uploaded to an apama-ctrl microservice, any required changes should be performed immediately so you are ready when the update is rolled out to SaaS environments.
References & Feedback
For more information on these and other changes, please review the Apama Change Logs. If you have any questions, feel free to post to the streaming-analytics-apama tag on the Cumulocity Tech Community.