Improved Column Reader API, First Cut of Geospatial Support: Hardwood 1.0.0.CR1 Is Available

This article announces the release of Hardwood 1.0.0.CR1, a candidate release for the Hardwood library, which provides APIs for reading Apache Parquet files. Key updates include a reworked ColumnReader API for batch-style columnar access, optimized for analytical workloads, with new Validity type for nullability modeling. Initial geospatial support for Parquet's GEOMETRY/GEOGRAPHY column types is introduced. The article includes code examples demonstrating usage of the new API for summing values and reading multiple columns. Additional improvements to the CLI and documentation are also highlighted. This is a technical update relevant to software development and data engineering.