Pathway

Changed
- `pw.io.s3.read` now monitors object deletions and modifications in the S3 source, when ran in streaming mode. When an object is deleted in S3, it is also removed from the engine. Similarly, if an object is modified in S3, the engine updates its state to reflect those changes.
- `pw.io.s3.read` now supports `with_metadata` flag, which makes it possible to attach the metadata of the source object to the table entries.

Fixed
- `pw.xpacks.llm.document_store.DocumentStore` no longer requires `_metadata` column in the input table.

Added
- `pw.xpacks.llm.document_store.SlidesDocumentStore`, which is a subclass of `pw.xpacks.llm.document_store.DocumentStore` customized for retrieving slides from presentations.
- `pw.temporal.inactivity_detection` and `pw.temporal.utc_now` functions allowing for alerting and other time dependent usecases

Changed
- `pw.Table.concat`, `pw.Table.with_id`, `pw.Table.with_id_from` no longer perform checks if ids are unique. It improves memory usage.
- table operations that store values (like `pw.Table.join`, `pw.Table.update_cells`) no longer store columns that are not used downstream.
- `append_only` column property is now propagated better (there are more places where we can infer it).
- **BREAKING**: Parsers and parser utilities including `OpenParse`, `ParseUnstructured`, `ParseUtf8`, `parse_images` are now async. Parser interface in the `VectorStore` and `DocumentStore` remains unchanged.
- **BREAKING**: Unused arguments from the constructor `pw.xpacks.llm.question_answering.DeckRetriever` are no longer accepted.

Fixed
- `query_as_of_now` of `pw.stdlib.indexing.DataIndex` and `pw.stdlib.indexing.HybridIndex` now work in constant memory for infinite query stream (no query-related data is kept after query is answered).

Added
- `pw.io.kafka.read` now supports reading entries starting from a specified timestamp.
- `pw.io.nats.read` and `pw.io.nats.write` methods for reading from and writing Pathway tables to NATS.

Changed
- `pw.Table.diff` now supports setting `instance` parameter that allows computing differences for multiple groups.
- `pw.io.postgres.write_snapshot` now keeps the Postgres table fully in sync with the current state of the table in Pathway. This means that if an entry is deleted in Pathway, the same entry will also be deleted from the Postgres table managed by the output connector.

Fixed
- `pw.PyObjectWrapper` is now picklable.
- `query_as_of_now` of `pw.stdlib.indexing.DataIndex` and `pw.stdlib.indexing.HybridIndex` now work in constant memory for infinite query stream (no query-related data is kept after query is answered).

Added
- `pw.io.mongodb.write` connector for writing Pathway tables in MongoDB.
- `pw.io.s3.read` now supports downloading objects from an S3 bucket in parallel.

Changed
- `pw.io.fs.read` performance has been improved for directories containing a large number of files.

Added
- `pw.io.deltalake.read` now supports custom S3 Delta Lakes with HTTP endpoints.
- `pw.io.deltalake.read` now supports specifying both a custom endpoint and a custom region for Delta Lakes via `pw.io.s3.AwsS3Settings`.

Changed
- Indices in `pathway.stdlib.indexing.nearest_neighbors` can now work also on numpy arrays. Previously they only accepted `list[float]`. Working with numpy arrays improves memory efficiency.
- `pw.io.s3.read` has been optimized to minimize new object requests whenever possible.
- It is now possible to set the size limit of cache in `pw.udfs.DiskCache`.
- State persistence now uses a single backend for both metadata and stream storage. The `pw.persistence.Config.simple_config` method is therefore deprecated. Now you can use the `pw.persistence.Config` constructor with the same parameters that were previously used in `simple_config`.

Fixed
- `pw.io.bigquery.write` connector now correctly handles `pw.Json` columns.

Fixed
- `pw.temporal.session` and `pw.temporal.asof_join` now correctly works with multiple entries with the same time.
- Fixed an issue in `pw.stdlib.indexing` where filters would cause runtime errors while using `HybridIndexFactory`.