The previous default settings for the weak finalization queue didn’t work well for systems that frequently freed many weak objects or had bursts of freeing many at once. Now, after each global garbage collection, the finalization queue size adjusts based on how many objects didn’t fit during that run. Instead of only increasing, it can also shrink when a large queue is no longer necessary. 

This allows the queue to handle modern workloads better without permanently using more memory. If memory constraints mean that the new defaults are too large, new startup and configuration parameters let you specify custom minimum and maximum queue sizes.

Several enchancements and corrections were completed in the low-level Unicode support library. For example, String and UnicodeString classes had their hashing unified, and the Unicode version of the library itself was updated to version 16.

A new class hierarchy has been added for hashing engines with EsHashEngine as the root class for new classes like EsSHA256Engine, EsSHA512Engine, and the previously existing AbtMD5Engine. The Grease framework was updated to use the new EsSHA256Engine instead of AbtMD5Engine.

A new common superclass SstUrlEncoder with SstUrlCodePageEncoder and SstUrlUnicodeEncoder as subclasses has been added. The SstUrlCodePageEncoder subclass implements percent encoding according to the RFC 2396 standard and is the default for encoding/decoding (regular) String instances with the character encoding defined by the current code page. The SstUrlUnicodePageEncoder subclass implements percent encoding as defined in the RFC 3986 standard and is the default for encoding/decoding UnicodeString instances with UTF8 character encoding.

The LdapSession object already allowed setting various options using values such as integers or strings. However, some options allow the execution of a callback function that is executed in the context of the LDAP library. Starting with VAST 14.0.0, the ability to pass a callback as a session option is enabled, which is useful for cases like client or server LDAPS certificate resolution. In addition, support has been added for paged LDAP searches, allowing iteration over the search results.

Full Unicode support has been added to Seaside and Grease. This means any Unicode string can be taken as input (e.g. from forms, URLs, etc.) and also rendered "as is" without further conversions. As part of this effort, Seaside has also been updated to version 3.5.6 and Grease to 1.17.0.

Support has been added for BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE data types, as well as the ability to use Oracle's TNS and EasyConnect strings.

SortFunctions provide a convenient way for developers to sort collections combining multiple criteria. SortFunctions can also be used as sort blocks in SortedCollection.