OWLIM v4 released and already integrated with leading Semantic Web tools and frameworks

*Ontotext* <http://www.ontotext.com/> are pleased to announce the 
release of *OWLIM version 4.0* <http://www.ontotext.com/owlim>. Many 
thanks to all our beta-testers who gave us feedback. On top of the BETA 
version, this release includes an automatic upgrade feature that allows 
OWLIM 4.0 to be used with repositories created with older versions and 
an improved data recovery mechanism in the event of abnormal termination.

OWLIM 4.0 offers a number of changes aimed at better differentiation 
between the editions of the product as well as some important new 
features and enhancements. The OWLIM editions 
<http://www.ontotext.com/owlim/editions> have been re-branded as follows:

    * *OWLIM-Lite* is the new name of SwiftOWLIM
    * *OWLIM-SE* (Standard Edition) is the new name of BigOWLIM - it is
      positioned as a single-server product
    * *OWLIM-Enterprise* is an extension of *OWLIM-SE*, which includes
      the Replication Cluster
      <http://www.ontotext.com/owlim/replication-cluster> capabilities.
      It is priced and sold as a separate product intended for scalable,
      high-resilience, mission-critical installations, offering extended
      online re-configuration and other features which improve manageability

*Scalability to 1 trillion nodes:* A brand new indexing mechanism has 
been developed for OWLIM-SE that uses a configurable bit-size for the 
internal identifiers of resources. For very large datasets, the bit-size 
can be set to 40 bits, allowing up to 1 trillion unique resources to be 
stored.

*Faster SPARQL 1.1 Query support:* Thanks to Ontotext's investment in 
development resource for the Sesame project, all OWLIM editions now 
boast support for this evolving SPARQL standard. While handling of 
SPARQL 1.1 through Jena was fast enough to allow OWLIM to get excellent 
scores in the latest BSBM evaluation 
<http://www.ontotext.com/owlim/references>, using SPARQL 1.1 through 
Sesame makes it even faster and available in all editions of OWLIM. 
SPARQL 1.1 Query offers new features such as: Aggregates, Subqueries, 
Negation, Expressions in the SELECT clause, Property Paths, Assignment, 
Short form for CONSTRUCT and an expanded set of functions and operators. 
Federation will be supported in a subsequent release.

*Easy server deployment: *every edition of OWLIM includes 
re-packaged Sesame Web applications for easy deployment of OWLIM 
servers. Now OWLIM can be deployed simply by copying a WAR file. New 
OWLIM repository instances can be created using the Sesame Workbench 
UI administration tool.

There are number of other new features for specific editions:

    * OWLIM-SE now provides a remote notification mechanism that
      includes transaction information.
    * Performance analytics: OWLIM-SE provides information on cache
      utilization and behaviour through a JMX interface. This feature
      can be useful when investigating loading behaviour and query
      performance.
    * OWLIM-Lite is now packaged as a single jar file, with a
      simpler free-for-use licensing scheme.

*OWLIM 4.0 is already integrated into **leading Semantic Web tools and 
frameworks:*

    * *The **Callimachus Project* <http://callimachusproject.org> is an
      early user of OWLIM 4.0. Callimachus is an Open Source framework
      for the creation of data-driven applications based on Linked Data
      principles. Callimachus and OWLIM 4.0 are being used in support of
      US Government customers by *3 Round Stones <http://3roundstones.com>*.
    * *TopBraid Suite
      <http://www.topquadrant.com/products/TB_Suite.html>* from
      *TopQuadrant <http://www.topquadrant.com>* is a set of integrated
      semantic solution products for connecting silos of data, systems
      and infrastructure to build flexible applications from linked data
      models. *TopBraid Enterprise Vocabulary Net
      <http://www.topquadrant.com/solutions/ent_vocab_net.html>*
      (TopBraid EVN) is a web-based solution for business stakeholders
      who need to collaborate on defining and linking enterprise
      vocabularies, taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies. To provide a
      scalable, powerful and efficient database back-end, TopBraid Suite
      and TopBraid EVN are being integrated with *OWLIM 4.0* using its
      Jena interface.

Plans for subsequent releases of OWLIM will keep the development team 
busy over the summer with the following features on the roadmap:

    * *SPARQL 1.1 Update* through the Sesame interface will be included
      in OWLIM 4.1 due to be released at the end of August.
    * *SPARQL 1.1 Federation* will be added to the Sesame framework and
      will be available most likely at the end of October.
    * Depending on user demand, we will add one or more of the following
      features later in the year: *data-type indexing* for more
      efficient range queries, *XPath* integration and/or *temporal
      extensions*.
    * Also planned is support for *virtual repositories*, which provide
      *access control* at named graph level as well as the isolation of
      both explicit data and inferred facts to specified groups of users.
    * *Administration and Control* for *OWLIM-Enterprise* will be
      improved with a dedicated graphical tool suite for managing
      clusters, detecting problems, initiating online backups, etc.

The OWLIM team.
June 2011