RELEASE-NOTES-1

Released on July 30, 2011.

• Full support for synchronizing RDF stores with SMW, and for answering #ask queries based on this data. The communication happens via SPARQL (1.1), and all SPARQL-capable stores should be supported. The following settings are needed in LocalSettings.php: $smwgDefaultStore = 'SMWSparqlStore'; $smwgSparqlDatabase = 'SMWSparqlDatabase'; // The following should be set to the URLs to reach the store: $smwgSparqlQueryEndpoint = 'http://localhost:8080/sparql/'; $smwgSparqlUpdateEndpoint = 'http://localhost:8080/update/'; $smwgSparqlDataEndpoint = 'http://localhost:8080/data/'; // can be empty The specific support that SMW used to have for the RAP RDF store has been discontinued.
• The Type namespace has been abolished. Builtin types now are displayed by the special page Special:Types, and there are no "custom types" any longer. By default, the Type namespace is gone and existing pages in this namespace can no longer be accessed. This can be changed by setting $smwgHistoricTypeNamespace = true in LocalSettings.php before including SMW.
• 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. Units must be declared on the property page (not on the Type page as before), and only units that have a declared conversion factor are accepted.
• 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. The declaration is still done with the property "has fields" as before. Properties must not be used more than once in has_fields, or the order of values will be random.
• Introduced pre-defined builtin properties for every datatype. For example, the property String is always of type String and available on all (English) wikis. This helps to keep some of the old Tpe:Record declarations valid.
• Changed the way parameters in query printers are specified and handled using the Validator extension. This includes improvements to the parameter options in the Special:Ask GUI and better error reporting for ask queries.
• Added UNIX-style DSV (Delimiter-separated values) result format.
• Reworked internal data model, cleaning up and re-implementing SMWDataValue and all of its subclasses, and introducing new data item classes to handle data. The class SMWCompatibilityHelpers provides temporary help for extensions that still depend on the old format and APIs.
• Fixed PostgreSQL issues with the installation and upgrade code.
• Added API module (smwinfo) via which statistics about the semantic data can be obtained.
• Added second parameter to #info that allows chosing either the info or warning icon.
• Added #smwdoc parser hook that displays a table with parameter documentation for a single specified result format.
• Fixed escaping issues in the JSON result format. A compatibility breaking change is that per property an array of values will be returned, even if there is only one.
• Added SMWStore::updateDataBefore and SMWStore::updateDataAfter hooks.