Pilot Data Server 9.6.0

Release Date: 2026-05-20

These are the release notes for Pilot Data Server version 9.6.0. This document describes the user-visible changes that have been made to the software since release 9.5.0.

New Features

  • Added support for template search using a union of concepts to improve multi-concept discovery when indexing is enabled (PDS-1400).

  • Added support for data elements search using a union of concepts and tags (PDS-1410).

Improvements

  • Improved resilience for heavy tag count request scenarios to reduce queue exhaustion and REST API unresponsiveness (PDS-1405).

Fixed Issues

  • Fixed a fresh-install issue where the PDS Launcher would crash, and simplified the initial installation for a more reliable setup (PDS-1409).

  • Fixed a long-running stability issue where Pilot Update Service would become unresponsive and return HTTP 500 errors until restarted (PDS-1414).

  • Fixed an indexing stability issue by adding safeguards for SQLite busy conditions to prevent cascading failures under load (PDS-1417).

Known Issues

  • Data Elements are not visible in Viz Pilot Edge, until the Template Index is ready (VPE-5991).

Note: This version does not automatically generate thumbnails for templates. Thumbnails must be manually generated by the user within Template Builder.

System Requirements

System

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019 (64-bit)

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2022 (64-bit)

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2025 (64-bit)

The above operating systems are also supported as virtual machines on VMware ESXi 7.0 or higher.

CPU

8 cores with a base frequency of 2.4 GHz or higher

RAM

  • 8 GB RAM minimum

  • 16 GB RAM recommended

Disk

40 GB free disk space for application and logs.

Additional

Visual Microsoft C++ 2015 packages

Note: If the Visual C ++ 2015 Redistributable Package is not installed, some software, such as Director and Media Sequencer, may encounter an HTTP 500 issue when connecting to Pilot Data Server.

System Requirements (Crop Service)

System

64-bit Windows Server 2019 or newer

CPU

  • Minimum 2 CPU cores and 4 GB RAM

  • Recommended 4 CPU cores and 8-16 GB RAM

Disk

5 GB free disk space

Recommended Software Requirements

As Pilot Database, either of:

  • Graphic Hub 3.9.2 (with Graphic Hub REST 2.9.2)

  • Oracle 19c with schema version 8.9

Recommended versions of other related products: 

  • Viz Pilot 8.9.5

  • Preview Server 4.7.1

  • Template Builder / Viz Pilot Edge 3.6.0

  • Media Sequencer 5.8.1

Note: The minimum requirement for Update Service, is Media Sequencer 5.7.

Authentication Compatibility

Identity Providers

Pilot Data Server uses the OpenID Connect Protocol (OIDC) to authenticate users. It can, in theory, be configured to integrate with any OIDC compliant identity provider.

The following providers have been tested:

  • Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory)

  • Vizrt SSO (Keycloak)

  • Okta

Existing Vizrt Products

Pilot Data Server authentication can, for now, only be used to add user access to the web applications (Viz Pilot Edge, Template Builder and DataServerConfig).

Some Vizrt products already support SSO solutions, but:

  • Current version of Viz Story (3.3) cannot be configured to use Pilot Data Server authentication. 

  • Although an existing Viz One installation of Vizrt SSO (Keycloak) can be configured as an identity provider for Pilot Data Server, the identity of Pilot Data Server users isn't re-used when clients are connecting to Viz One. The current version of Viz Pilot Edge still uses the pre-authenticated hosts configured in the database settings when connecting to search providers.

Newsroom Systems

Any newsroom system hosting Viz Pilot Edge in a modern, secure browser environment, should be able to utilize authentication. This requires:

Documentation

Documentation for Template Builder is available at the Vizrt Documentation Center, under Viz Pilot Edge:

Support

Support is available at the Vizrt Support Portal.