Disk Format
* Removed file `__lock.tdb` from the array folder and updated the format spec. Also removed config `vfs.file.enable_filelocks`. [2692](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2692)
New features
* Publish Subarray access/functionality for use outside of core. [2214](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2214)
* Add TILEDB_BLOB datatype [2721](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2721)
* Expose array schema libtiledb version information [2863](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2863)
Improvements
* Convert loose files `thread_pool.*` into a unit [2520](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2520)
* Bump cmake_minimum_required to 3.21 [2532](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2532)
* dynamic_memory unit, including allocator [2542](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2542)
* implement windows CI functionality with github actions [2498](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2498)
* implement windows crash dump file processing for windows [2657](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2657)
* Added object libraries: baseline, buffer, thread_pool [2629](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2629)
* ubuntu core dump processing (GA) CI [2642](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2642)
* Avoid copy and set of config in `tiledb_query_add_range` as a performance optimization from the new subarray APIs [2740](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2740)
* core file stack backtracing and artifact uploading for mac CI builds [2632](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2632)
* Move `Status::*Error` to `Status_*Error` [2610](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2610)
* ZStd Compressor: allocate one context per thread and re-use. [2701](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2701)
* Include offset index in oversize error message [2757](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2757)
* Print resource pool contained type on error [2757](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2757)
* Using RETURN_NOT_OK_TUPLE in attribute.cc. [2787](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2787)
* Add timestamp range to schema evolution to avoid race conditions based on schema timestamp [2776](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2776)
* Convert dimension deserialize to factory [2763](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2763)
* Improve object type detection performance [2792](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2792)
* Query condition: differentiate between nullptr and empty string. [2802](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2802)
* patch git+git: to git+https: to avoid GH access failure [2805](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2805)
* Remove examples writing sparse fragments to dense arrays. [2804](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2804)
* Change the ZStd filter compression level range and add defined compression level default values [2623](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2623)
* Change the ZStd filter compression level range and add defined compression level default values [2811](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2811)
* changes to augment dbg output on build failures [2801](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2801)
* Sparse unordered w/ dups reader: process queries until full user buffers [2816](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2816)
* Support var-length CHAR QueryConditions [2814](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2814)
* Sparse global order reader: merge smaller cell slabs. [2818](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2818)
* Fixing build errors in query condition. [2820](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2820)
* Enabling refactored dense reader by default. [2808](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2808)
* Switching TUPLE macros to be variadic. [2822](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2822)
* Read tiles: no buffer pre-allocation for no-opt filter. [2819](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2819)
* Refactored dense reader: resetting the unsplittable flag on completion. [2832](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2832)
* Refactored dense reader: code cleanup. [2833](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2833)
* Fixing Subarray::crop_to_tile to crop default dimensions. [2831](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2831)
* Dense reader: fixing src cell offset for different cell order. [2835](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2835)
* Support storing integral cells in a chunk. [2821](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2821)
* Improve error handling for Array non empty domain calls. [2845](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2845)
* Remove OpenArray and refactor StorageManager and FragmentInfo [2839](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2839)
* Adding min/max/sum/null count to fragment info. [2830](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2830)
* Fine-tune unfiltering parallelization [2842](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2842)
* Removing ch9473 comments in unit-cppapi-string-dims.cc. [2837](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2837)
* Global writes: writting bad validity values when coordinates are dups. [2848](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2848)
* Fixing issues in VS2019. [2853](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2853)
* Writer: processing var tiles before offset tiles. [2854](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2854)
* Writer: moving unordered_map::emplace outside of parallel_for. [2860](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2860)
* Dense reader: removing unnecessary loop around read_attributes. [2859](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2859)
* Convert deserialize function of Attribute to factory function [2566](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2566)
* Convert Filter class deserialize and create to factory functions [2655](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2655)
* Tile metadata test: reducing amount of spew in verbose mode. [2882](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2882)
* compute_results_count_sparse_string: fixing incorect memcmp. [2892](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2892)
* Sparse rindex readers: fixing query resume on TileDB cloud. [2900](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2900)
Deprecations
* Deprecate `TILEDB_CHAR` in favor of users using `TILEDB_BLOB` or `TILEDB_STRING_ASCII` for attribute datatypes. [2742](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2742) [#2797](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2797)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_ANY` datatype [2807](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2807)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_STRING_USC2` and `TILEDB_STRING_USC4` datatypes. [2812](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2812)
* Drop support for Visual Studio 2017 compiler [2847](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2847)
Bug fixes
* Better windows relative path support with '/' [2607](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2607)
* Fixed dangling links in README. [2712](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2712)
* Handle multiple core files for stack traces and archiving [2723](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2723)
* restore lost cmake code necessary for clean build on windows with -EnableAzure [2656](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2656)
* Return error for nonempty_domain access regardless of local/remote status [2766](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2766)
* Fix segfault in new sparse null `QueryCondition` code [2794](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2794)
* ReaderBase needs to load var sizes [2809](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2809)
* Only initialize REST query strategies once [2836](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2836)
* Logger json format output is not valid [2850](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2850)
* Closing a non-opened array should be a no-op instead of error. [2889](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2889)
* patch (unsupported) 3rd party azure cpp lite sdk used by TileDB to avoid memory faults [2881](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2881)
* Free allocated latest array schema when on error of loading all array schemas [2907](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2907)
API additions
C API
* Add `tiledb_array_schema_evolution_set_timestamp_range` to avoid race conditions based on schema timestamp [2776](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2776)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_CHAR` in favor of users using `TILEDB_BLOB` or `TILEDB_STRING_ASCII` for attribute datatypes. [2742](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2742) [#2797](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2797)
* Add {set,get}_validity_filter_list [2798](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2798)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_ANY` datatype [2807](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2807)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_STRING_USC2` and `TILEDB_STRING_USC4` datatypes. [2812](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2812)
* Add `tiledb_array_schema_get_version` for fetching array schema version [2863](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2863)
* Introduce experimental `tiledb_ctx_alloc_with_error` to return error when context alloc fails [2905](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2905)
C++ API
* Add `ArraySchemaEvolution::set_timestamp_range` to avoid race conditions based on schema timestamp [2776](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2776)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_CHAR` in favor of users using `TILEDB_BLOB` or `TILEDB_STRING_ASCII` for attribute datatypes. [2742](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2742) [#2797](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2797)
* Add validity_filter_list set/get and missing get tests [2798](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2798)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_ANY` datatype [2807](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2807)
* Deprecate `TILEDB_STRING_USC2` and `TILEDB_STRING_USC4` datatypes. [2812](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2812)
* Add `ArraySchema::version()` for fetching array schema version [2863](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2863)
* Add missing cstddef include to fix compile w/ GCC 7 [2885](https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/pull/2885)