Filter expressions, new functions, question references in native queries, and performance enhancements.

Hi, everyone. We hope that all of you are staying healthy and safe.

We wanted to let you know that we’ve got another big release for you with a bunch of new features and enhancements that should help make it even easier to ask your questions in Metabase.

As always you can read the upgrade guide if you’re ready to get going, but here’s a bit more about what you’ll find in 0.35.

Filter expressions, string extracts, and more

At long last, we’ve added the ability to create filter expressions in the custom question builder, which allow you to include ORs in your filters. You can now write expressions like, ([Subtotal] > 100 AND [Tax] < 10) OR [Product.Category] = "Gizmo"

We’ve also added a whole host of new spreadsheet-like functions that can be used when creating filter expressions, custom columns, or custom aggregations. So you can now use things like case statements, string concatenation, or sumif and countif functions. Check out the documentation to see all the new functions you can use.

Reference saved questions in your SQL queries

You can now include the results of another saved question in your SQL queries using syntax like with Example as {{ #123 }} or select * from {{ #123}}, where #123 is the ID of the saved question. (Note that you can only include questions based on the same database as the one you’ve currently selected.)

Performance improvements

We’ve reworked the way Metabase deals with the saved questions “database” that allows you to nest saved questions inside of new ones. The result is a much faster experience on many pages throughout Metabase.

We also improved the way we fetch results from your data warehouse. Instead of buffering the results in memory, we now stream the results directly from the database to the client. Metabase driver authors should take a look at what’s new in 0.35 for a full list of changes.

Last but not least, we’ve improved some of the API endpoints to limit the amount of metadata being fetched in Metabase environments with a large number of database tables or questions.

Bug fixes and miscellany

We took care of a bunch of bugs in this release, so be sure to check out the full list of fixes and other enhancements.

We hope you enjoy all the updates, and we’ll see you again soon.

Cheers, The Metabase team