- From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
- Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:29:24 -0400
- To: public-lod@w3.org
On 8/3/11 1:06 PM, Markus Krötzsch wrote: > We are happy to announce the new major release > > SMW 1.6.0 > Semantic MediaWiki > http://semantic-mediawiki.org/ > > SMW is a popular free and open source content management system based > on the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia [1]. It adds > capabilities of semantic data management, querying, and export. Many > extensions to SMW are available for adding further features ranging > from faceted data browsing to RDFa support. > > SMW 1.6 newly adds support for using SPARQL-compatible RDF stores for > managing data (including query answering). So you mean: SMW is no longer inextricably bound to MySQL? I can just point it to a SPARQL compliant DBMS? > This is possible by exploiting the new SPARQL 1.1 Update capabilities > for writing, and SPARQL Query for accessing semantic data. See [2] for > details. Completely rewiring SMW queries to SPARQL requires many > different SPARQL features which is an interesting testbed for RDF > stores. The main system used for development was 4Store which worked > quite well. Virtuoso has been tested successfully too, but the graph > support in SMW is currently a bit limited so adjustments are needed > there (will be fixed in upcoming versions). Feedback on experiences > with other RDF stores in combination with SMW is welcome. > > Other changes in SMW 1.6.0 include: > > * Added UNIX-style DSV (Delimiter-separated values) result format. > * Added full support for PostgreSQL database backends. Hmm. does this mean MySQL and PostgreSQL as opposed to ODBC accessible RDBMS backends? If so, why? It just doesn't need to be so ODBC is actually more powerful than any native RDBMS specific API, and substantially so. > * Reworked internal data model. > * Changed the way in which units of measurement work. Type:Number now > does not accept any units, and a new type "Quantity" is used for > numbers with units. > * The declaration of Type:Record properties has changed. Instead of a > list of datatypes, the declaration now requires a list of properties > that are to be used for the fields of the record. > * Introduced pre-defined builtin properties for every datatype. > * Fixed escaping issues in the JSON result format. > > For further details see [3]. > > It is planned to further extend the SPARQL support for SMW, first by > adding special handling to exploit features of important RDF stores > (e.g. there already is special code for 4Store that exploits its > resource limit features). Moreover, connectivity to other external > SPARQL endpoints might be added (given that SMW already includes a > SPARQL result parser and a SPARQL query builder). You have to make a loosely coupled solution. The technology infrastructure is in place. You should be able to speak about SMW without provisos for: 4Store, Virtuoso, MySQL, PostgreSQL. It is a chunk functionality that doesn't need an DBMS (graph or relational) backend specificity. Anyway, I'll take a look at what can be done re. this critical final mile decoupling :-) Anyway, thanks for the significant improvements as outline above, still a zillion times better than the old architecture. Kingsley > > To keep up to date with SMW developments, you can follow the SMW > Twitter [4] or Indenti.ca [5], or register to our mailing lists [6]. > > Markus > > P.S. Apologies if you received multiple copies of this email. > > > [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/ > [2] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Using_SPARQL_and_RDF_stores > [3] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki_1.6 > [4] https://twitter.com/#!/SemanticWiki > [5] https://identi.ca/smw > [6] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Getting_support > > -- Regards, Kingsley Idehen President& CEO OpenLink Software Web: http://www.openlinksw.com Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen
Received on Wednesday, 3 August 2011 17:29:47 UTC