Tonic Structural release information

Structural can now detect the following additional sensitivity types that are defined by the HIPAA Safe Harbor method:

• Medical record numbers
• Health plan beneficiary numbers
• Account numbers
• Certificate and license numbers
• Web URLs
• Full face photographic images and similar images
• Biometric identifiers, including finger and voice prints

Removed the environment setting TONIC_SUBSETTING_CYCLE_BREAK_GREEDY_ALGORITHM. The greedy algorithm to compute the required cycle breaks for subsetting is no longer available.

Snowflake

• A new environment setting allows you to control whether Structural creates the destination database schema before it populates the destination data. By default, TONIC_SNOWFLAKE_SKIP_CREATE_DB is false, meaning that Structural creates the destination database and schema. If you set this to true, then Structural does not create the schema. You must create the destination database with the full schema. You can add TONIC_SNOWFLAKE_SKIP_CREATE_DB to the Environment Settings list on Tonic Settings.
• Improved performance when writing to Snowflake for de-identified tables and some Passthrough tables.

Yugabyte data connector - Structural now allows you to connect to databases on Yugabyte version 2024.1 and above. The Yugabyte data connector is available with a Professional or Enterprise license. It only supports Yugabyte SQL (YSQL).

When you configure a custom security rule, you can now create or edit the assigned generator preset. You can also use a workspace to preview the security rule results. The preview displays the matching columns for the selected workspace.

Structural can now detect the following additional sensitivity types:

• US driver’s license number
• Passport number
• Marital status
• GPS coordinates
• Non-birthday dates: admission date, discharge date, date of death
• US license plate

MySQL

• When the SQL mode ALLOW_INVALID_DATES is set, Structural now allows Passthrough for columns that contain invalid dates.

Snowflake

• For the Data Pipeline V2 process, reduced the frequency of polling cloud platforms for new unloaded files.

Fixed an issue on the webhook configuration panel where users could not click Save when the Message Body tab contained large property values.

Fixed an issue that caused the Notifications service to stop processing webhooks.

Improved the detection of name values to identify more specific types of names.

Amazon EMR

• Fixed an issue with previewing data after applying the Timestamp Shift Generator or Date Truncation Generator to timestamp columns with timezones.

When Structural detects a state abbreviation, it no longer identifies it as a full state name.

During a sensitivity scan, the value finders now look more holistically at both the data and the column name instead of assessing them individually.

For post-job webhook URLs, you cannot use URLs that resolve to a private IPv4 range.

To provide the column name matching criteria for custom sensitivity rules, you can now use a regular expression.

The Structural sensitivity scan can now detect UK and Canada postal codes.

You can now use the Structural API to manage custom sensitivity rules.

When you configure a PostgreSQL or MySQL workspace to write the destination data to a container repository, you can now specify the name of the database.

Fixed an issue where the column sensitivity type was not updated when a later sensitivity scan detected a different type. Columns that are manually marked as sensitive are not affected.

Increased the number of column names that Structural uses to detect sensitivity types.

Amazon EMR

• Iceberg now correctly handles schemas that contain capitalized column names.

Salesforce

• The Continuous generator is now available.
• The Algebraic generator is now available.
• You can now use WHERE clauses in subsetting target table configuration.

When configuring a workspace to write output to an Ephemeral snapshot, you can now optionally configure the compute resources. By default, the resources are based on the size of the source database.

Custom sensitivity rules - On self-hosted Enterprise instances, you can now configure custom sensitivity rules, which allow you to create your own sensitivity types. For each rule, you configure the general data type, text matching rules for the column name, and the recommended generator. Structural uses these rules during the sensitivity scan. Matching columns are included on the Recommended Generators by Sensitivity Type panel.

Toleration configuration for output to container repositories - Self-hosted customers who write output to a container repository can now set pod tolerations to enable pods to be scheduled on nodes that have taints. The tolerations are configured in environment settings. You can add these settings to the Environment Settings list on Tonic Settings.

MySQL

• Fixed an issue with subsetting for instances of MySQL that were deployed using Amazon Aurora where downstream tables were not populated properly.

Fixed an issue where sensitivity scans suggested generators based on substrings within a column name.

HTML is now removed from text in comment fields.

Fixed an issue where the XML Path generator did not work correctly.

A new environment setting, TONIC_SUBSETTING_CYCLE_BREAK_GREEDY_ALGORITHM, indicates whether to use a new, faster greedy algorithm to compute the required cycle breaks for subsetting. By default, the setting is false.

File connector

• Fixed an issue with uploading .txt files for local file workspaces.
• For CSV file groups, added an option to specify the encoding format of all files. If not specified, Structural attempts to detect the encoding automatically. When encoding cannot be determined, the automatic encoding detection now defaults to UTF-8 instead of windows-1252.

MongoDB

• Added an API endpoint to retrieve all of the field paths in a database.

MySQL

• Writing output to a container repository now works with multiple database schemas.
• Improved resilience to transient issues when copying tables.
• Fixed an issue with delayed retries of failed file uploads during data generation.

Oracle

• You can now write output data from an Oracle workspace to a Tonic Ephemeral snapshot.

Salesforce

• You can now provide connected app credentials in the workspace configuration. These fields are only displayed if the credentials are not configured in the TONIC_SALESFORCE_CONSUMER_KEY and TONIC_SALESFORCE_CONSUMER_SECRET environment settings.

Snowflake

• Fixed a regression where ALTER statements were inappropriately run through the GetDdl flow.

Sensitivity scans now detect name values more accurately.

Fixed an issue with certificate uploads for database settings.

Fixed an issue where the Structural application would hang after you created a workspace.

Shared logs are now transferred to an HTTPS endpoint instead of an Amazon S3 endpoint.

Amazon EMR

• Fixed an issue where Table View filters and table filters reported all WHERE clauses as invalid.

Amazon Redshift

• You can now configure a workspace to include or exclude specific schemas.

PostgreSQL

• When you choose to write output to an Ephemeral snapshot, you can now provide a custom configuration file.

Improved the accuracy of name detection.

MongoDB

• On Collection View, for hybrid view, added a Filters panel. For single view, you can now filter fields by value.

Oracle

• The Data Generation Pipeline v2 for Oracle now supports subsetting.

Salesforce data connector - The Salesforce data connector is now available for self-hosted instances that have a Professional or Enterprise license. It is currently only available by request. To request access to the Salesforce data connector, contact Tonic.ai support.

Linking address columns for recommended generators - The recommended generators panel in Privacy Hub now indicates when address columns should be linked. The columns are displayed in groups. You then apply the recommended generators to all of the columns in the group, and the columns are automatically linked.

Other updates

Fixed an issue with subsetting. When processing upstream tables with nullable foreign keys that had no referenced key values to process, upstream filters were not applied.

Improved performance of the Conditional generator when using the IS IN operator.

The upsert option for workspaces is now out of beta.

Fixed an issue where the number of generators that are slow to compute was calculated incorrectly, which affected how we parallelized the generator processing.

The default value for the environment setting TONIC_ORACLE_DBLINK_ENABLED is changed to false. The plan is to eventually remove the feature.

Fixed an issue where the TONIC_DISABLE_IPV6 setting did not completely prevent services from binding to ipv6 addresses.

When applied to a numeric type column, the SSN generator now by default generates values without hyphens.

Amazon EMR

• Added support for the Iceberg framework in Glue. If you use the Iceberg framework, then in the Spark Configuration section of the workspace details, make sure to add the following configurations: spark.sql.catalog.glue_catalog, .warehouse, .catalog-impl, and .io-impl.

File connector

• Improved resilience to missing cloud files when configuring file groups, previewing data, and running generation jobs.

MongoDB

• Fixed an issue with creating virtual foreign keys in MongoDB workspaces.

MySQL

• Improved the performance of the destination database teardown step for databases that have many partitions.

Oracle

• You can now use the Data Pipeline V2 process to run data generation for an Oracle workspace. The Confirm Generation panel includes a toggle to enable or disable the new process. Note that you cannot use the new process when subsetting is enabled.

Snowflake

• Fixed a subsetting issue where extra downstream rows were included when no primary keys existed in the table relationship.

API endpoints for subset configuration - The Tonic API now includes endpoints for subsetting configuration. You can use the endpoints to retrieve the subsetting configurations for a workspace, update subsetting configuration, and remove subsetting configuration. A subsetting configuration identifies a table as either a target table (percentage or WHERE clause) or a lookup table.

Improved how Tonic identifies values as names, to reduce false positives.

For upsert data generation, fixed an issue that caused failures on tables that contain foreign keys but no primary keys.

File connector

• Sensitivity scans no longer discard the most recently generated set of downloadable generated files, which are generated from files uploaded from a local file system.

MongoDB

• Fixed an issue that caused duplicate or inaccurate schema issues to be displayed on Schema Changes view.

Oracle

• Tonic now validates destination database objects, such as views and packages, that were invalidated by the data generation. A warning is issued for objects that fail to validate. Validation failure can be caused by insufficient permissions for the Tonic user on the destination schema.

PostgreSQL

• For Data Pipeline V2 data generation, fixed a race condition that could cause data generation to fail.

Helm charts for deploying Structural to Kubernetes are now published at quay.io/tonicai/structural in addition to GitHub.

From the recommended generators panel on Privacy Hub, you can now enable or disable self-consistency for all columns within a sensitivity category.

Fixed an issue in Table View that sometimes caused the column order to be incorrect.

Added an environment variable TONIC_DISABLE_IPV6 to the PyML container. When set to true, the container no longer listens on IPv6 addresses.

File connector

• Added support for Avro files.

MySQL

• Fixed an issue with validating subsetting target table WHERE clauses when the table or schema name contained special characters.

PostgreSQL

• Added limited support for ltree columns on versions older than 1.2. For tables where all columns are assigned the Passthrough generator, Structural copies the ltree data from the source database to the destination database. In tables that are de-identified, ltree columns are nullified in the destination database. If an ltree column is not nullable, then all of the columns in the table must be assigned the Passthrough generator.

Snowflake

• Added support for date and time columns that have a seconds precision of 0.
• Fixed an issue where the incorrect credentials were used when using separate source and destination buckets and credentials for Amazon S3.

SQL Server

• Fixed an issue introduced in v1178 where XML columns might be persisted as nvarchar columns in the destination database.

Sending telemetry to Tonic.ai is now required and enforced. After 5 days of failed telemetry connections, a warning displays. If the connection issue persists for 15 days, data generation is restricted.

Structural Cloud users can now reset their passwords from the login page. To reset your password, click Forgot your password?.

You can now set the TONIC_POSTGRES_REFRESH_MATERIALIZED_VIEWS environment setting from the Environment Settings tab on Tonic Settings.

File connector

• Added support for AWS C2S Secret Regions.

SQL Server

• Improved the upsert logic to prevent jobs from hanging.

From the recommended generators panel on Privacy Hub, you can now enable or disable self-consistency for each column.

When you create a virtual foreign key, the nullability of the foreign key is now determined by the nullability of the foreign key column.

On Privacy Hub and the job details view, changed the label on the Download option to Reports and Logs.

Db2 for LUW

• Subsetting is now supported.

MySQL

• Fixed an issue where data generation failed when object identifiers included symbol characters.

PostgreSQL

• Workspaces with PostgreSQL 16 databases can now write output to a container repository.

Added a new API endpoint to resolve all schema changes in a workspace. You can choose whether to resolve only conflicting changes, only notifications, or all of the schema changes.

Fixed an issue that caused the Tonic Structural PyML Service to be unreachable in IPV4-only containers.

Added a new conflicting schema change when a column that has an assigned generator becomes a foreign key. Foreign key columns must inherit the generator from the primary key.

Structural can now generate data with subsetting when a primary key table is truncated, as long as the foreign keys that reference the primary key are nullable.

Amazon Redshift

• Added support to pass through varbyte, geometry, and hllsketch types.

File connector

• For CSV, XML, and JSON files, fixed issues with the data preview in Database View and Table View. The preview no longer includes extra rows, and the preview now correctly reflects the Skip first N rows setting.
• Fixed the validation of file groups that only contained compressed files.

Snowflake

• For subsetting, added support for virtual foreign keys.

SQL Server

• Fixed an issue that caused data generations to fail for versions of SQL Server older than SQL Server 2016.

For the notifications image, replaced alpine with ubuntu.

File connector

• For a local files workspace, the job details view for a successful data generation now includes an option to download the transformed files that were produced by that job.
• For workspaces that use files from cloud storage, you can now include prefix patterns in the file group definition. You can also provide file extension filters. The file group then includes all of the files that match a prefix pattern and the file extension filters. The file group details now include the content type, file extension filter, and prefix patterns.
• For cloud storage workspaces, users who do not have permission to view all buckets can once again specify the bucket to view.
• For cloud storage workspaces, added a configuration option to only process new files during data generation. For existing file groups, the new configuration is off by default. For new file groups, the configuration is enabled by default.

MongoDB

• Fixed an issue where environment setting updates from the UI required a restart to take effect.

MySQL

• For a workspace that is configured to write output to Ephemeral, you can now provide a custom configuration file.

Snowflake

• Fixed an issue where the Subsetting tab disappeared after you edited a workspace.

SQL Server

• For versions 2017, 2019, and 2022, you can now configure workspaces to write output to a container repository.

During the free trial, Structural now displays next step highlights to indicate the next recommended action. When you hover over the recommended action, Structural displays an explanatory tooltip.

A new environment setting, TONIC_DB_MAX_POOL_SIZE, sets the connection pool size for the Structural application database. The default value is 3.

Fixed an issue where the preview data in the JSON Mask generator editor did not respect the applied table filter.

File connector

• For workspaces that connect to Amazon S3, you can now specify different credentials for the source and output locations.
• For cloud storage workspaces, fixed a regression in Tonic v1146 where the file explorer sometimes displayed incorrect results and files could not be added.
• You can now add Parquet files to a file connector file group, either from cloud storage or a local file system. You cannot select the following Parquet file types: HalfFloat, Struct, Union, Dictionary, Map, List, FixedSizeList, or arrays of any type. There also is no file preview for Parquet files.

MongoDB

• Fixed an issue that prevented the use of regex conditions in the conditional generator.
• You can now select the UUID Key generator as a sub-generator when configuring a composite generator.

PostgreSQL

• Fixed an issue where Preserve Destination tables sometimes were not preserved when data generation failed.

Writing output to a Tonic Ephemeral snapshot - For database types that Tonic Ephemeral supports (currently PostgreSQL and MySQL), you can now write the output to an Ephemeral user snapshot. This replaces the option to write the output to an Ephemeral database, except for workspaces in the Structural free trial. In Ephemeral, you can use the user snapshot to start new Ephemeral databases.

Other updates

For the UUID Key generator, added a new configuration option, Preserve Version and Variant. By default, the setting is turned off. When turned on, the version and variant bits from the source UUID are preserved in the output value. For the API, the new setting is preserveVersionAndVariant.

In the Tonic Structural free trial, the sample workspace now by default writes the output to a Tonic Ephemeral database.

Fixed an issue where vertical scrolling was sometimes blocked.

You can now configure the allowed SSL/TLS protocols and ciphers on the Tonic Web Server. To configure the protocols and ciphers, use the environment settings TONIC_WEB_SERVER_TLS_PROTOCOLS and TONIC_WEB_SERVER_TLS_CIPHERS.

File Connector

• Data generation jobs no longer fail when they encounter a configured file group file that no longer exists in the source cloud storage location.
• For local file workspaces, fixed a regression from Tonic v1136 where users could not upload additional local files into a file group.

MongoDB

• Fixed an issue that caused generations to fail when documents contained empty arrays or document fields.

MySQL

• Improved job warnings around missing tablespaces in the destination database.

Fixed an issue in Table View where characters were sometimes represented inaccurately. For example, a lowercase x would become a multiplication symbol.

Fixed an issue where data generation to Tonic Ephemeral Cloud failed with the error "Ephemeral URL not found".

For a schema change that adds a new column, both the Schema Changes view and the API response now include the data type for the new column.

For the Structural free trial, Structural now displays a checklist for each workspace. There are slightly different checklists for database-based and file connector workspaces.

Added support to run Structural in dual-stack networks and IPv6-only network environments.

On the workspace details view, fixed an issue where an Ephemeral API key appeared to be populated when no value was provided.

Fixed an issue that caused data generation to Ephemeral to fail with "Ephemeral output must be configured".

Fixed an issue where data generation to Ephemeral failed after a first successful run.

Amazon Redshift

• You can now enable TLS for workspace data connections.

MySQL

• Fixed an authentication issue that prevented output from being written to an Ephemeral snapshot.

SQL Server

• You can now configure a SQL Server workspace to write output to an Ephemeral snapshot.

The Structural API now includes endpoints to get and set the assigned table modes and table filters for a workspace.

Fixed an issue where the workspace audit trail displayed generator preset events that occurred before the workspace was created.

Fixed an issue where an error was returned when users tried to export selected files from a file group.

Improved error message when Structural cannot write output to Ephemeral because Ephemeral does not have a compatible base image for the database.

Databricks

• When a workspace is configured with an unsupported version of Databricks, the error message now suggests the supported Databricks versions.
• Updated the default spark_version to 14.3.

Google BigQuery

• Fixed an issue with applying some generators to numeric columns on large tables.

Oracle

• Fixed an issue where rows that contained NULL values in a VARCHAR2(1) column were dropped during data generation.

Output to a Tonic Ephemeral database - Tonic Ephemeral is a separate Tonic.ai product that allows you to create temporary databases. On Tonic Cloud, for data connectors that Ephemeral supports (currently PostgreSQL and MySQL), you can configure the workspace to write the destination data to an Ephemeral database. This is the default option for data connectors that Ephemeral supports.

The database belongs to your Ephemeral account. If you do not already have an Ephemeral account, then Tonic automatically creates a two-week Ephemeral free trial account for you. The Tonic data generation job details provide access to the database connection details.

Free trial checklist - During the free trial, the sample workspace now includes a checklist to help users get through the required steps to complete their first data generation.

Other updates

Free trial users can no longer use a public email address to create an account.

Fixed an issue where password reset links lead to a blank page.

Fixed an issue where pay-as-you-go users would see the countdown for a free trial.

In the sample workspace, fixed an issue where a faulty destination database template caused an error when a user tried to update it.

Google BigQuery

• Tonic can now de-identify snapshot tables.

Oracle

• For databases that use non-default database character sets, fixed an issue where rows that contained character data sometimes failed to be written to the destination database.
• For databases that use non-default database character sets, fixed an issue where passthrough CLOB data types had extra bytes inserted when they were copied to the destination database.

PostgreSQL

• If you do not use extensions, then the destination database no longer requires a super user.

Snowflake

• Subsetting is now supported on Snowflake workspaces. The table filtering option is still available.

You can now manually add selected environment settings to the Environment Settings list on Tonic Settings.

Improved the performance of data previews in the Tonic application.

For workspaces that write output data to a container repository, fixed an issue that prevented GAR credentials from being saved.

Google BigQuery

• Improved performance for data preview.

Snowflake

• The workspace configuration now includes a Trust Server Certificate option for the source and destination connections. When enabled, it indicates to bypass certificate revocation checks.
• Data generation jobs are now more resilient when they encounter views that have dependencies that Tonic does not have permissions for.
• Destination privileges can now exclude schema creation. If the user does not have schema creation permissions, then the schemas must already exist in the destination database.

SQL Server

• The upsert function now supports tables that have identity columns but do not have primary keys.

Privacy Report PDF file

We added a new Privacy Report PDF that you can download from Privacy Hub and the job details view. The Privacy Report PDF contains a summary of the privacy ranking values, visualizations to summarize the workspace column privacy rankings based on the applied generators, and a summary table that contains the .csv Privacy Report data.

To accommodate the new file, on Privacy Hub and the job details page, the available downloads are combined into a Download menu.

Assigning recommended generators from Database View

On Database View, when an unprotected column has a recommended generator, the generator name tag now displays the type of sensitive data that was detected.

When you click the generator name tag, Tonic displays a panel that displays the sensitivity type, the recommended generator, and sample source and output data based on the recommended generator. The panel provides options to either apply or ignore the recommendation.

Other updates

Fixed an issue where changing the configuration of a generator preset did not accurately update the count of occurrences of the preset.

Oracle

• Fixed an issue with Oracle 12.1 and 12.2 where constraints that had an index creation statement failed to apply.
• Tonic can now de-identify external tables. External tables display in the Tonic application and can be assigned table modes and generators. During data generation, external tables are created as relational tables in the destination schema.

New Db2 for LUW data connector - Tonic now has a data connector for IBM Db2 for Linux, Unix, and Windows (Db2 for LUW). Tonic supports Db2 for LUW version 11.5.

Other updates

When the AI Synthesizer is used in a workspace, Tonic now verifies before data generation that the AI Synthesizer does not use more than the maximum allowed categories.

Amazon EMR

• Improved data generation performance when using Spark 2.4.0-3.2.x.Databricks
  
  
  • Fixed an issue in Databricks 11.3+ where a generator that was consistent on another column received modified input values if a generator was applied to the consistency column. Generators that are consistent on another column now correctly receive unmodified input values.
  • Improved data generation performance when using Spark 2.4.0-3.2.x.
  Google BigQuery
  
  
  • You can now de-identify views, except for views that are written in Google Legacy SQL. On the workspace settings view, to enable de-identification of views, toggle De-identify Views to the on position. You can then assign table modes and generators to the views. In the table lists, views are identified by (view) after the view name.
    
    For each view, Tonic:
    
    
    • Writes the de-identified data to a table called <view name>_tonic_table.
    • Creates a view that has the same name and metadata as the view in the source data, but is populated from the destination table.
  • Fixed an issue where Passthrough tables that had table constraints failed to copy to the destination database.
  • Fixed an issue where cloned tables did not appear in the Tonic application, but caused job failures. Cloned tables now display within Tonic and can be managed in the same way as any other table.
  Oracle
  
  
  • For Oracle 12, improved the schema remapping across multiple object types and configurations.
  • Fixed an issue where Tonic failed to copy database link objects that were configured using passwords. Tonic no longer processes database links. If required, users must manually create database links in the destination schema.
  • Fixed an issue where tables that contained computed columns dropped rows during data generation.
  Snowflake
  
  
  • You can now assign the JSON Mask generator to Snowflake variant columns.