<!-- Release notes generated using configuration in .github/release.yml at v7.0.0 -->
What's Changed
New features
* Full encoding and decoding support for References by piotrszul in https://github.com/aehrc/pathling/pull/1786 (also see #1784 from chgl)
* Save mode (append, error, overwrite or ignore) can now be set when saving a data source to Parquet and NDJSON formats through the library API
Bug fixes
* Fixed a bug where year-only dates passed to the `until` function would always return an empty result
Dependency updates
* Upgraded from Java 11 to 17
* Upgraded to Spark 3.5.1
* Upgraded to Delta Lake 3.2.0
* Upgraded to HAPI 7.0.2
* Upgraded to Spring Boot 3.2.0
Changes to defaults
* `databricks.delta.schema.autoMerge.enabled` is now set to `false` by default in the server (see 1785 from chgl)
**Important note**: Because this release contains schema changes, you may need to re-import your data.
If you override JVM options (or `JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS` in the case of the Docker image), you may need to add `--add-exports=java.base/sun.nio.ch=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens=java.base/java.net=ALL-UNNAMED`. This is a new requirement due to tighter controls over class access in Java 17.
**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/aehrc/pathling/compare/v6.4.2...v7.0.0