Exasol 8 release 2025.1 is Here: Faster, Smarter, and Built for What’s Next
Fresh from Xperience 2025 in Berlin, we’re excited to announce the general availability of Exasol 8 release 2025.1, our most powerful release yet. This launch marks a bold step forward for our customers, our product, and our promise to deliver a high-performance, enterprise-grade analytics engine that never stops evolving.
Unveiled to a packed audience at our Xperience Berlin event in May, “Exasol 8 release 2025.1” is more than just a version number. It’s a signal that we’re accelerating innovation, doubling down on quality, and evolving with the needs of modern data teams.
What’s New in Exasol 8 release 2025.1? A Release Built with You in Mind
Every release we make is shaped by real-world use, customer feedback, and an uncompromising focus on speed, reliability, and scale. Exasol 8 release 2025.1 delivers:
AI-Native Analytics: Built for the AI-Driven Enterprise
Your data is ready for AI. Now your database is too.
Exasol 8 release 2025.1 embeds AI directly into your analytics with in-database language models, SQL-native AI integration, and Exasol Text AI. Run advanced AI workloads where your data resides, without moving or transforming it.
With new GPU support for UDFs, accelerate training and inference for high-performance machine learning.
- Exasol Text AI
AI solution for analyzing unstructured data, making it analytics-ready to enhance business and customer insights. Access via the Exasol AI Lab. - In-database Language Models
Host language models directly within Exasol for secure, flexible AI workflows, with the option to call hosted models. Native functionality with tutorials in AI Lab. - Native AI Integrations in SQL
Leverage UDFs to call AI models directly within SQL workloads, customizing AI workflows and scaling with Exasol’s MPP engine. Native functionality with tutorials in AI Lab. - GPU Support for UDFs (V1)
Accelerate UDFs via GPUs for significant performance gains over CPU execution. Preview feature – contact us for details.
This isn’t just about AI compatibility; it’s about making AI operational inside the enterprise-grade database you already trust; fully air-gapped and secure in your own environment, with no outside access required.
Admin & Platform Control: Modern Tools for Modern Admins
The platform just got easier to run and future-ready.
Managing your Exasol environment is now simpler and more intuitive with enhanced Admin UI usability and controls. Support for Ubuntu 24 ensures you can run Exasol 8 on the latest, most secure enterprise Linux distributions, aligning with your infrastructure and compliance needs.
- Admin UI
A graphical UI for Exasol DB administrators to enhance efficiency in system health checks, log troubleshooting, backup management, and browsing BucketFS. Included in both Community and Commercial Editions. - Support for Ubuntu 24
Long-term support release ensuring customers receive the latest OS patches. Install Exasol 2025.1 on Ubuntu 24.
These updates reflect our commitment to giving platform teams the tools they need to support modern analytics at scale.
Cloud & SaaS Acceleration: Smarter in the Cloud, Elastic, Automated, Effortless
Run faster. Scale smarter. Automate more.
Exasol 8 release 2025.1 enhances our SaaS platform with work cluster session offloading for dynamic session shifting between compute nodes, optimizing performance and cost. New action scheduling capabilities introduce built-in automation, allowing repetitive admin tasks and orchestration workflows to run hands-free.
- SaaS: Worker Cluster Session Offloading
Redistribute client sessions to additional worker clusters to scale out and support higher loads. Enable and configure in the SaaS UI. - SaaS: Automation with Action Scheduling
Schedule actions like start, stop, or resize clusters for flexible infrastructure management based on workload schedules. Configure in the SaaS UI.
Whether you’re managing daily ETL jobs, pipeline refreshes, or governance checks, Exasol now does more of the heavy lifting for you.
Performance & Engine Innovation: Faster at the Core, Performance that Scales With You
Every second counts. Every workload matters.
Exasol 8 release 2025.1 introduces core engine improvements for faster, more efficient, and precise workloads. Key highlights include:
- Performance Improvements in Core DB – UNION ALL Optimization
Boost complex SQL query performance, especially with CTEs and views, improving query times by up to 100x. Upgrade to version 8. - Compile Time Improvements
Speed up SQL query compilation by up to 8x, improving query processing and handling demanding workloads. Upgrade to version 8. - Nanosecond Timestamp
Support for TIMESTAMP datatype with nanosecond precision, aiding precise time use cases and data migration from legacy systems. Upgrade to version 8. - Improved Exasol to Exasol Bulk Loader
Seamless data transfers across environments with effortless connectivity through a single database port. Upgrade to version 8.
Together, these enhancements ensure that your most demanding analytics and data engineering tasks run smoother even as data volumes and query complexity grow.
Modern Data Ecosystem Integration: Open to the Ecosystem, Built to Work With How You Work
Wherever your data lives, Exasol connects.
Exasol 8 release 2025.1 enhances flexibility with a fast Parquet bulk loader for rapid ingestion of large columnar data volumes from data lakes. Virtual schema support for Databricks and Snowflake ensures seamless querying across platforms without data movement.
- Fast Parquet Bulk Loader
Boost data loading speeds up to 10x using Apache Arrow for parallelized loads from AWS S3. Upgrade to version 8. - Databricks/Snowflake Virtual Schema
Connect Exasol with Snowflake and Databricks to access and query data directly, enabling workload repatriation, hybrid environments, and easy migration. Visit GitHub Schema connector repositories.
It’s part of our commitment to open architecture: letting you connect, extend, and optimize your data landscape on your terms.
Twice a Year. Every Year. Welcome to Our Bi-Annual Release Cadence
With Exasol 8 release 2025.1, we’re not just releasing features, we’re introducing a new rhythm.
Our bi-annual release cadence brings greater predictability and transparency to our innovation roadmap. You’ll now see two major releases each year, each one tested, hardened, and aligned with what matters most to our customers:
- You get new capabilities faster without compromising stability
- You can plan ahead with predictable release milestones
- You stay ahead with a platform that evolves with your needs
- Innovation now has a rhythm. And that rhythm is built around you.
Innovation You Can Trust: Built with Rigorous Engineering and Quality at Its Core
As Mathias Golombek, our CTO, shared in this blog post and this technical deep dive “That’s How Serious Exasol Takes Performance”, Exasol’s release process is anything but ordinary.
Every feature in Exasol 8 release 2025.1 has been tested across thousands of real-world scenarios. Our engineering culture is grounded in continuous integration, automated testing, real workload simulation, and human code reviews, all of which give our customers:
- Greater deployment confidence
- Fewer regressions and surprises
- More uptime, fewer headaches
With Exasol 8, you’re not just getting new features, you’re getting peace of mind.
New to Exasol? Try the Community Edition for Free
If you haven’t tried Exasol yet, now’s the perfect time.
We’ve just launched our brand-new Exasol Community Edition, a free version of our analytics engine you can run locally or in the cloud. It’s ideal for:
- Developers and analysts exploring high-performance analytics
- Data teams testing Exasol in proof-of-concept environments
- Students and educators working with real-time analytics tools
- Instant setup
- No time limits
- Real performance, zero risk
Download the Community Edition now and see what Exasol 8 can do.
Using Exasol 7? Now’s the Time to Upgrade
If you’re running Exasol 7, you’re already benefiting from a powerful analytics engine, but version 8 takes it to the next level.
With performance upgrades, smarter integrations, and a more transparent upgrade path, Exasol 8 release 2025.1 is the most future-ready release we’ve ever built.
To upgrade:
We’ve made the upgrade process as smooth as possible so you can get the benefits of version 8 right away.
Let’s Build the Future of Analytics Together
We’re proud of what we’ve shipped, but even more excited about what comes next.
Your feedback, ideas, and innovation help shape every release. So, whether you’re just getting started with our Community Edition or scaling Exasol 8 across mission-critical workloads we want to hear from you.
Thank you for being part of the Exasol community. Let’s build what’s next.