[[release-highlights-7.3.0]]
== 7.3.0 release highlights
++++
<titleabbrev>7.3.0</titleabbrev>
++++

coming[7.3.0]

//NOTE: The notable-highlights tagged regions are re-used in the
//Installation and Upgrade Guide

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Voting-only master nodes

A new <<voting-only-node,`node.voting-only`>> role has been introduced that
allows nodes to participate in elections even though they are not eligible to become the master.
The benefit is that these nodes still help with high availability while
requiring less CPU and heap than master nodes.

NOTE: The `node.voting-only` role is only available with the default
distribution of {es}.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Reloading of search-time synonyms

A new <<indices-reload-analyzers,Analyzer reload API>> allows to reload the
definition of search-time analyzers and their associated resources. A common
use-case for this API is the reloading of search-time synonyms. In earlier
versions of Elasticsearch, users could force synonyms to be reloaded by closing
the index and then opening it again. With this new API, synonyms can be updated
without closing the index.

NOTE: The Analyzer reload API is only available with the default distribution
of {es}.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== New `flattened` field type

A new <<flattened,`flattened`>> field type has been added, which can index
arbitrary `json` objects into a single field. This helps avoid hitting issues
due to many fields in mappings, at the cost of more limited search
functionality.

NOTE: The <<flattened,`flattened`>> field type is only available with the
default distribution of {es}.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Functions on vector fields

Painless now support computing the <<vector-functions,cosine similarity>> and
the <<vector-functions,dot product>> of a query vector and either values of a
<<sparse-vector,`sparse_vector`>> or <<dense-vector,`dense_vector`>> field.

NOTE: These functions are only available with the default distribution of {es}.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Prefix and wildcard support for intervals

<<query-dsl-intervals-query,Intervals>> now support querying by
<<intervals-prefix,prefix>> or <<intervals-wildcard,wildcard>>.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Rare terms aggregation

A new
<<search-aggregations-bucket-rare-terms-aggregation,Rare Terms aggregation>>
allows to find the least frequent values in a field. It is intended to replace
the `"order" : { "_count" : "asc" }` option of the
<<search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation,terms aggregations>>.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Aliases are replicated via {ccr}

Read aliases are now replicated via <<ccr-put-follow,{ccr}>>. Note that write
aliases are still not replicated since they only make sense for indices that
are being written to while follower indices do not receive direct writes.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== SQL supports frozen indices

{es-sql} now supports querying <<frozen-indices, frozen indices>> via the new
<<sql-index-frozen,`FROZEN`>> keyword.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Fixed memory leak when using templates in document-level security

{xpack-ref}/document-level-security.html[Document-level security] was using an
unbounded cache for the set of visible documents. This could lead to a memory
leak when using a templated query as a role query. The cache has been fixed to
evict based on memory usage and has a limit of 50MB.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== More memory-efficient aggregations on `keyword` fields

<<search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation,Terms aggregations>> generally
need to build
<<search-aggregations-bucket-terms-aggregation-execution-hint,global ordinals>>
in order to run. Unfortunately this operation became more memory-intensive in
6.0 due to the move to doc-value iterators in order to improve handling of
sparse fields. Memory pressure of global ordinals now goes back to a more
similar level as what you could have on pre-6.0 releases.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Data frame pivot transforms to create entity-centric indexes

<<put-dfanalytics,Data frames>>, released in 7.2, allow to transform an
existing index to a secondary, summarized index. 7.3 now introduces Data frame
pivot transforms in order to create entity-centric indexes that can summarize
the behavior of an entity. 

NOTE: Data frames are only available with the default distribution of {es}.

// end::notable-highlights[]

// tag::notable-highlights[]
[float]
==== Outlier detection

{stack-ov}/security-privileges.html[Outlier detection] utilizes Elastic data
frame indexes to evaluate source indexes across multiple dimensions and identify
clusters of data based on the assigned values and which values are different
from those of the clustered data point. An outlier score can be used to indicate
how different an entity is from other entities in the index based on the
dimensions that you supply.

NOTE: Outlier detection requires a platinum license.

// end::notable-highlights[]