Elemental 6.8.1 and 7.4.1 have been released

I am delighted to announce that Elemental version 6.8.1 and 7.4.1 have just been released.

These releases include a small number of important bug fixes, and a few new features. They should be especially interesting to users who use the REST and XML:DB APIs. The releases are available from: 

* https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/releases/tag/elemental-6.8.1

* https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/releases/tag/elemental-7.4.1

Don't worry if you feel like you missed the release announcements for 6.8.0 and 7.4.0. No announcement was made for those as a small regression was reported by early adopters, we were able to address that in less than 24 hours, and put out these subsequent releases to fix that too.

### Features

1. All XDM Item types can now be serialised over the REST and XML:DB APIs - [#108](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/108) (Closes issues: [#68](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/issues/68), [eXist-db/exist#4919](https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/issues/4919), and [eXist-db/exist#5910](https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/issues/5910))

2. External variables of all XDM types can now be bound and sent to the REST and XML:DB APIs - [#108](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/108)

3. Elemental's eXist-db REST API is now documented in OpenAPI format - [elemental-exist-rest-api/1.0.0](https://app.swaggerhub.com/apis/evolvedbinary/elemental-exist-rest-api/1.0.0) (Closes issue: [eXist-db/exist#5843](https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/issues/5843))

4. Optimised the execution of `fn:reverse` which has improved its performance - [#90](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/90)

5. Added the Java Annotation `@XSuite.XSuiteConfig` that allows XSuite XQuery Test Suites to be configured by annotation - [#97](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/97)

6. Improved JavaDoc around REST Server query parameters - [#66](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/66) (Closes issue: [eXist-db/exist#5844](https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/issues/5844))

### Bug Fixes

1. Security Account Metadata is now correctly preserved - [#106](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/106) (Closes issue: [eXist-db/exist/issues/5904](https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/issues/5904))

2. Binding an external variable to a query that does not declare it via the REST or XML:DB APIs now raises an error - [e2e0512](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/108/commits/e2e051267f21aed8da309da6c588f3582c62c7a1), and [cfcae5e](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/108/commits/cfcae5ebcff81149aaa0ac11833420ff9b383ce3) (Closes issue: [#67](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/issues/67))

3. Processing Instruction persistent DOM nodes now correctly return their target as their node name - [#110](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/110) (Closes issue: [eXist-db/exist/issues/5923](https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/issues/5923))

4. The prefix of XPath Standard Library functions is now shown in the output from Profiling - [#84](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/84)

5. RESTXQ Resource Functions now show the correct line number from the source code when they raise an error - [#86](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/86)

6. The Collection Cache used by node sets can now be released automatically if there is high memory pressure - [#112](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/112)

7. Database statistics are now solely logged to the `statistics.log` file - [#115](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/115)

8. The Services Manager now correctly identifies its log messages as coming from itself - [#82](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/82)

9. Improvements to some XPath/XQuery error codes - [#c645867](https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/pull/108/commits/c64586782c962e9b34976d59ad717cd1846220c8)

### Backwards Compatibility

* Elemental 6.8.1 is 100% backwards compatible with Elemental 6.7.0 (and eXist-db 6.3.0), and it should be a simple drop-in replacement for any user. Like Elemental 6.7.0 it requires Java 8.

* Elemental 7.4.1 is 100% backwards compatible with Elemental 7.3.0, and it should be a simple drop-in replacement for any user. Like Elemental 7.3.0 it requires Java 21.

Further information and downloads can be found here: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/releases