Virtuoso OpenSource Edition News

2008 News Announcements

August 27, 2008

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v5.0.8

This version focuses on performance optimizations and speed enhancements:

• SQL compiler is now re-entrant
• Self-Join optimizations exposed at JDBC Driver level (as was already the case with ODBC)
• SPARQL engine and SPARQL-BI extension optimizations have been merged
• TriG? serialization format for RDF is now supported alongside RDFa, N3, Turtle, and RDF/XML
• Additional Sponger Cartridges for Digg, FriendFeed?, and CrunchBase?
• Improved graph quality and fidelity from existing Cartridges (especially Freebase, eBay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and many others)
• Improved handling of and bug fixes relating to the `OPTIONAL' SPARQL keyword
• Self-Dereferencing fixes (e.g., Sponger was not properly de-referencing its own Proxy URIs)

On the ODS front, the following have been addressed:

• More flexible Mapping service model based on new OAT-based Mapping Control (which also includes a "province" locator)
• Improved SyncML integration with Briefcase folders
• Gem URL fixes for Atom, RSS, and RDF feeds

For more details, see the release notes.

July 17, 2008

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v5.0.7

New: fully operational Native Graph Model Storage Providers for the Jena & Sesame Frameworks.

Licensing change: the Jena and Sesame providers have been added to the "Client Protocol Driver exemptions" paragraph in the VOS License.

Improvements:

• Better support for alternate RDF indexing schemes
• Parallelization of RDF sponger operations across multiple RDF data-sources concurrently
• New Sponger Cartridges and enhancements to the existing Cartridge collection
• Inference engine optimizations for subclass and subproperty that efficiently handle taxonomies numbering tens of thousands of classes.
• OWL equivalentClass and equivalentProperty inference support.
• Dynamic handling of host component of IRIs; host component is now flexible enough to painlessly handle multiple homing of domains and host name component changes; no duplicate host name data storage required via [URIQA] section of INI
• SPARQL optimizations to improve LIMIT and OFFSET handling
• JDBC driver has new connect options, smaller memory footprint and optimized batch support
• ODS applications now support SyncML

Documentation Additions:

• How to read query plans and how to use the key performance meters
• How to diagnose SPARQL queries and how to decide what indexing scheme is right for each RDF use case
• How to debug RDF views
• Better Documentation on SPARQL extensions and options
• An updated RDF View example based on the Northwind demonstration database that reflects underlying enhancements

Bug Fixes:

• Generally improved safety of built-in functions, better argument checking.
• Verified UTF8 internationl character support in all RDF use cases, SQL client/SPARQL protocol/all data formats.

For more details, see the release notes.

March 28, 2008

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v5.0.6

On the RDF side, the bitmap intersection join has been optimized so that it is now typically twice as efficient as an equivalent nested loop join.

In some cases XML trees in the object position in RDF quads were incorrectly indexed, leading to failure to retrieve quads. This is fixed and should problems occur in existing databases, they can be corrected by simply dropping and re-creating an index.

The cost model has been further tuned. We have run the TPC-H queries with larger databases and have profiled it extensively. There are improvements to locking, especially for concurrency of transactions with large shared lock sets, as is the case in the TPC-H queries. The rules stipulate that these have to be run with repeatable read. There are also optimizations for decimal floating point.

As part of the completion of our Business Intelligence extensions to SPARQL (SPARQL-BI), we released a sampling of TPC-H queries translated into SPARQL, and integrated this into the standard demonstration database. The new demo database provides a live sample of the TPC-H schema and instance data in linked-data form, complete with SPARQL-BI variants of the standard TPC-H queries. Relational-to-RDF model-mapping is now demonstrably mature and robust enough for enterprise-grade business-intelligence applications.

For more details, see the release notes.

Feb 12, 2008

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v5.0.5

The previous release, 5.0.4, was short-lived due to a problem in SPARQL-to-SQL code-generation, so this announcement addresses the new features introduced over and above version 5.0.3:

In the core Database Engine: Added the LUBM benchmark for RDF data managers to testsuite; a check for backup/restore status; optimizations and an inxop option for bitmap indexes.

In the areas of RDF and SPARQL: Support for xsl:float; Sponger cartridges for SVG, XBRL and HR-XML documents; URL-rewrite rules for XBRL; additional SPARQL engine optimizations.

In the ODS Applications Suite: New support for Meaning of a Tag (MOAT); Support for Identity and authentications standards such as OpenID 2.0 and OAuth; additional ODS generated de-referencable URIs; enhanced Wiki search; improvements to Calendar.

Additionally, there are the following bug-fixes: In the core database: Problems with FTP server and HTTP headers; saved unnecessary seeks in bitmap checks; fixed the 64-bit range of IRI and row IDs; various minor bug-fixes and compiler-warnings.

In the ODS Applications Suite: Fixed ATOM protocol upstreaming, Creole markup, docbook and invalid HTML generation in ODS-Wiki; improvements to SIOC based RDF instance data in relation to ODS-Calendar todo-lists; a new UI for system navigation.

2007 News Announcements

December 12, 2007

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v5.0.3

Features and enhancements associated with this release include:

In the Database Engine:

• Added transparent HTTP Content Negotiation
• Added improvements for deadlock handling
• Added new PHP hosting module to replace old virtuoso-php-t server
• Added stored procedure hook DB.DBA.BACKUP_COMPLETED
• various bugfixes

SPARQL and RDF:

• Added support for SPARQL update via HTTP GET/PUT in WebDAV
• Added Jena, Sesame and Redland interfaces
• Added Biblionthology for Amazon cartridge
• Added OAI, XBRL and Yahoo Finance cartridges
• Added support for option (SOFT EXCLUSIVE)
• Added support for PROVEN_MATCH
• Added adaptive dictionary of objects for graph keywords
• Added functions for running stats on rdf loading
• Improved speed of RDF loading
• Improved support for aggregate expressions
• Use UTF-8 for RDF serialization
• Various speedups for SPARQL

ODS Application Suite:

• Added a++ links
• Added feature to reorder tabs on the main navigation bar
• Added HTTPS support to ODS
• Added LDAP to FOAF support
• Added news feed block
• Added SCOT tags
• Added support for ods activity type to opensocial
• Added table for ods messaging
• Added trigger for "application added" activity
• Replaced URLs with SIOC Data Space URIs
• Various bugfixes and enhancements

September 27, 2007

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v5.0.2

Features and enhancements associated with this release include:

• 64-bit Integer Support
• RDF Sink Folders for WebDAV - enabling RDF Quad Store population by simply dropping RDF files into WebDAV
• SPARUL implementation optimizations
• Enhanced typed literal support in SPARQL e.g xsd:string() and xsd:boolean()
• Additional automatic metadata extraction from Audio binary files
• Support for PHP 5.2 runtime hosting
• Enhanced UI for RDF Linked Data deployment via URL-rewrite rules
• New Sponger Cartridges for Facebook, Freebase, Wikipedia, GRDDL, RDFa, eRDF, and more
• Demonstration Database includes RDF Views & SQL Table samples for the THALIA data integration benchmark and testsuite
• Tutorial Application includes Linked Data style RDF Views for the Northwind SQL DBMS schema (which is the same as the standard Virtuoso demo database schema)
• A new Amazon EC2 Image variation of Virtuoso with a fully configured instance comprising the Virtuoso core, OpenLink Data Spaces application suite and the OpenLink Ajax Toolkit.

May 31, 2007

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v5.0.1

This version includes:

• An enhanced cost-based optimizer
  • Use of fixed rather than dynamically generated statistics, enhancing the Inference Engine
  • Added larger sample in query cost model sampling
• Enhanced SPARQL support:
  • Added wide row BREAKUP function to Virtuoso SQL enabling further optimization of RDF Views of SQL data
  • Added support for LIMIT and OFFSET clauses to CONSTRUCT and DESCRIBE
  • Significant performance optimizations
  • Added QUAD MAP <...> { ... } group pattern which adds granularity to "Triple Provenance" management
• Documentation updates
• Significant update of all ODS applications
  • Added compliance with the latest SIOC vocabulary
  • Added Calendar Data Space for managing events and exposing data as RDF
  • Added OpenID login and registration
  • Added new SIOC spec subclasses which exploit Virtuoso's RDF-inference engine
  • Added AddressBook? Data Space for managing Social Networks via SIOC
  • Other bug fixes

April 4, 2007

Release v5.0.0

This version includes a major rewrite of the database engine, giving drastic speed improvements on both single- and multiple-CPU architectures, both to the SQL engine and RDF Views (SQL-RDF mapping). RDF support now includes middleware (called the Sponger) for transforming existing microformat, Web services, and XHTML data into RDF triples "on the fly". This release has full text indexing of literal objects in triple patterns, basic inferencing (subclass and subproperty support), SPARQL update language support and aggregate functions, and improved support for the XML Schema Type System (bif:xcontains).

2006 News Announcements

December 6, 2006

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v4.5.7

This version includes the following enhancements:

• RDF storage now uses bitmap indexing by default;
• RDF Views functionality for exposing SQL Data on the fly as RDF Instance Data for SPARQL Query Access is now stable;
• Declarative N3/Turtle-based syntax for declaring RDF VIEWs of SQL Data is now stable;
• SPARQL extensions for automatic crawling of related resources now implemented;
• Miscellaneous SMP-related engine improvements.

The new RDF functionality will be documented by new articles to come on the Virtuoso Open-Source wiki.

There are also bug fixes in the following areas:

• RDF parsing
• Building without SSL support
• Finding certificates when implementing HTTPS websites
• Byte-order conversion issues when copying database between platforms
• Minor build issues

October 27, 2006

Announcing Virtuoso Open-Source Edition v4.5.6

This version includes the following enhancements to the core Universal Server Engine:

• New declarative RDF Views language for generating "Virtual RDF Graphs" from SQL data, by mapping SQL to RDF in real time. This means that any relational data stored in Virtuoso or any other relational database can be converted seamlessly to RDF and queried with SPARQL without making an RDF copy of the data itself
• Enhanced RDF Triple Store
• Support for the RDF NET Protocol for reading and writing to Triple Store
• Support for the Semantic Bank Protocol for reading and writing to Triple Store (Virtuoso is now a bona-fide PiggyBank? backend)
• SPARQL Processor performance-enhancements
• New AJAX-based Interactive SPARQL Query GUI
• Bitmap index support - This is a generic SQL and engine enhancement that delivers dramatic space savings and incresed performance specially in RDF triple storage and many business intelligence workloads.
• Documentation updates covering: RDF APIs, the ATOM and GData protocols
• Runtime hosting for PHP5 in addition to PHP4
• Online Documentation and Tutorials now mapped to SIOC ontology thereby presenting documentation as an RDF data-set accessible to SPARQL Queries
• Engine enhancements including automatic background compaction for up to 30% less space usage for typical relational or RDF databases, better SMP behavior with shorter critical sections, fixes in transaction logic and more

The release also includes the following enhancements to the OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) application suite:

• Built-in support for the Semantically Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC) Ontology
• Built-in support for the FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) Ontology
• Built-in support for the AtomOWL Ontology
• Built-in support for the SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) Ontology
• New SPARQL usage examples demonstrating SIOC, FOAF, SKOS and AtomOWL based on their use across each ODS application realm
• GeoURL? support in the ODS-Weblog application
• Support for OpenID for browser-based authentication (client- and server-side)
• Support for Yadis authentication discovery protocol (client- and server-side)
• Significantly improved UI

8 Aug 2006:

Announcing OpenLink Data Space Update 2

This update of the ODS application-suite adds pervasive support of the SIOC ontology. All relevant pages have a link to a dynamically generated SIOC file that contains the most-recent updates of the application as RDF. Also, all ODS application data is now queriable via SPARQL. See VOSODSSparqlSamples for a set of sample queries.

Announcing Virtuoso Open Source Edition 4.5.4

The Virtuoso triple-store now implements the Semantic Bank protocol and is compatible with the Piggybank browser plugin. See using Piggybank with Virtuoso for details.

This release of Virtuoso adds a new dynamic SQL costs and statistics_model with special support for SPARQL. See our white paper for this and other enhancements. We also add a parallel TTL loader which can use multiple CPU's and overlap IO with loading. See the ttlp_mt function in the documentation.

To upgrade a previous installation of Virtuoso Open Source Edition and OpenLink Data Spaces, see Upgrading Instructions.

8 June 2006:

Announcing OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS)

ODS is a suite of Virtuoso applications for creating and maintaining modern web-presence. It includes Social Networking, Weblog Platform, File Sharing, Wiki Platform, RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0, and RSS 1.1 Content-Aggregation Platform and more.

ODS has been developed to provide and a coherent nexus for Web-2.0 and the Semantic Web (also known as Data Web). All ODS application Data Spaces can be queried via Google's GData protocol. All Data Space front-end pages offer RSS 2.0, ATOM 1.0, and RSS 1.1 (RSS-RDF) content-syndication feeds, FOAF (for individual Data Space insights covering data and social networks), VCard, XBEL and other standard data-interchange formats where applicable.

ODS also offers browsing of application data via WebDAV, making your data-universe visiable as a filesystem in the form of a URI-addressable and mountable tree (viewable via WebDAV-aware clients). A later release will add SPARQL access to application data.

Announcing Virtuoso Open Source Edition 4.5.3

This update of Virtuoso adds support for the OpenLink Data Spaces, now bundled into the source tree.

Metadata of resources stored in Virtuoso's WebDAV repository is now queriable with SPARQL. There are updates to tutorials and demos plus bug-fixes.

27 April 2006:

Virtuoso Open-Source Edition 4.5.2 is now available. The new release adds Windows support with both a binary distribution and Visual Studio project files, better SPARQL support and documentation, bug fixes and more.

25 April 2006:

Virtuoso Scalability: analysis of OLTP performance factors on different hardware.

17 April 2006:

New Article: see how to use Virtuoso's XML and text capabilities for smart search and filtering.

11 April 2006:

Initial release of Virtuoso Open-Source Edition (version 4.5.1): Press Release