Dear SMW users and developers, work on SMW 1.6 has made tremendous progress in the past few weeks, and the code is stabilizing now. We still have quite some bugs to fix ahead of us, but the main changes in architecture and user features are completed.
If they have not done it yet, extension developers should now adapt their code to work with the modified APIs. Audacious users are invited to beta test. Installation instructions are online [1] and the SMW Sandbox is updated to the most recent version [2]. == Main changes for users == * Significantly extended database backend support: SMW now works with PostgreSQL and with any RDF store that supports SPARQL and SPARQL Update. I had sent details about the latter to this list earlier -- testers for Virtuoso and other stores would still be most welcome! Support for using the PHP-based interface of the RAP RDF store is discontinued. The new SPARQL functions change also prepare SMW for loading RDF data from other Web sources (not implemented yet). * Parameter validation for user inputs: The #ask function will now generate more helpful error messages if some input is not suitable, e.g. if "limit" is set to "bogus" instead of a number. Query printers may also use this capability for their own parameters, so that even extensions can provide this validation. For doing this, SMW requires the Validator extension to be installed. * No more "Type" namespace: As discussed on these lists, the Type namespace has been removed. There is a configuration setting that allows users to keep the Type namespace enabled (so that any pages there can still be accessed). The features of Type articles are now provided by Special:Types. * New Delimited-Separated Values format: This is like CSV but with a sane and easy-to-parse escaping of special characters. * Unit of measurement declarations change: With the vanishing of Type pages, users who have used custom types (for unit conversion) must move the text from the Type page to the Property page that uses these custom types. Instead of the custom type page, "has type" is now set to "Quantity" for properties that have custom unit conversions. * Type:Record declarations change: Properties of Type:Record no longer take a list of types, but a list of properties as their declaration (has fields). This ensures that Records can use all information that is given on Property pages, not just the type declarations. * Compatibility with MediaWiki 1.18. * Bugfixes. == Main changes for developers == There have been substantial changes to the data model: almost all uses of SMWDataValue have been replaced by more lightweight SMWDataItem objects. Code has been cleaned up in the process and should be much clearer to understand in many places (also beyond the data item changes). See my earlier email to the developer list for details. Please ask on the developer list if you should encounter any problems updating your code to work with SMW 1.6. SMW 1.6 is an important major release for us, and a unique opportunity to do some changes that are not fully compatible with earlier versions (but that really improve the overall functionality and code quality). If you have comments or bug reports, it is a very good time to make them known. Some things will be much harder to change later on. We intend to stabilize SMW within the next 14 days, so that a first release of SMW 1.6 could happen in early June. Thanks to all who have already contributed to this major effort, and to all who are currently working hard on upgrading their code to SMW 1.6. Cheers, Markus [1] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation_1.6.0 [2] http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What Every C/C++ and Fortran developer Should Know! Read this article and learn how Intel has extended the reach of its next-generation tools to help Windows* and Linux* C/C++ and Fortran developers boost performance applications - including clusters. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmay _______________________________________________ Semediawiki-devel mailing list Semediawiki-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-devel
