[Semediawiki-user] Halo/SMW+ Release 1.5.3 available

[Christof N. <ni...@on...>]

Dear SMW Community,

we are happy to announce the new release 1.5.3 of SMW+ and the Halo core  
extension. It includes new features and a refinement of the product  
philosophy. What does this mean?

First, this means that we have adjusted the software core of Halo/SMW+ to  
make it more lean and stable. From now on, SMW+ includes all basic  
semantic usability extensions to Semantic MediaWiki, namely the Halo core  
extension (incl. Scriptmanager, Application Programming extension,  
Deployment Framework), the WYSIWYG extension and the Enhanced Retrieval  
extension. All the remaining special purpose extensions (like Data Import,  
Rule Knowledge, Collaboration etc., excluding TripleStore Professional) of  
course stay fully available as well. They are now subsumed as "SMW+  
Extension Suite" and can be installed easily once you need them (see the  
corresponding product page [1]).

Second (and starting with this version), the SMW+ windows installer,  
vmware and Amazon AMI are now completely free of charge. We adjusted our  
licensing model based on your feedback.

Third, SMW+ can now be upgraded to SMW+ Professional. This gives the  
customer warranty as well as the option to enter into a software support  
and maintenance contract with ontoprise.

= New features in 1.5.3 =

== Faceted Search ==
Explore semantic data exceptionally fast
* Drill-down search results by categories, properties, and their values
* Find relevant articles, facts, and semantic content
* Identify suitable properties for your queries

== Editing in the Ontology Browser ==
Build up and curate the wiki structure in one place
* Create categories, properties, subproperties, as well as instances from  
within the Ontology Browser
* Find categories faster in result sets and in the treeview by adding icons
* Get proposals for suitable annotations in the Semantic Toolbar, which  
means better guidance for consistency and completeness

== Tabular Forms ==
Change values and text in result tables with one click
* Automatic update of the sources of federated values
* Easy adding of further data and instances to the table
* Completely syntax-free user-wiki-interaction

== Improved Autocompletion ==
Better and faster access to categories, properties and instances
* Supports domain-less properties and Semantic Forms
* Displays more information for each proposal (e.g. annotated instances in  
case of categories or type and range in case of properties)

== Halo ACL Refinement ==
* Automatic creation of access rights and group membership based on  
semantic annotations
* Grant access rights dynamically e.g. depending on project membership

== Additionally ==
* Special:SMWHaloAdmin now allows to install the Halo core extension on  
usual webspace without SSH access (via creating needed special tables from  
within the wiki)
* Queries are supported by the Semantic Toolbar, can have names and can be  
searched via "load query" tab
* Deployment Framework writes admin-logs and can set and recover wiki  
restore points

== Semantic Data Integration (req. TripleStore Professional) ==
Import and export to ontology engineering tools provided by OntoStudio
* Integration and inferencing of heterogeneous data silos
* High-end wiki ontology curation, refinement and testing
* Visual editing of complex rules and federated semantic queries

= Sandboxes and Online Demo =
New Sandboxes to try out the features of SMW+ are online! Just visit the  
Online Demo page [2] to get an overview and direct access to the sandbox  
of your preferred extension. Note that the sandboxes are also part of  
every new SMW+ 1.5.3 installation.



; Release Notes
Halo/SMW+ 1.5.3 was succesfully tested with Firefox 3.6.x or IE 8,  
MediaWiki 1.16.1, SMW-version 1.5.6, PHP 5.3.3 and MySQL 5.1. Find the  
corresponding release notes at [3]. Documentation for SMW+ and the Halo  
core extension can be found as usual in the help section of SMWforum [4].  
For downloading open source SMW+, the Halo core extension, and the SMW+  
Extension Suite, please visit  
http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Download.


We hope you will enjoy SMW+/Halo 1.5.3 and watch out for your feedback![5]

Best Regards

Christof (on behalf of the Halo team)



[1] http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/List_of_Extensions
[2] http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Online_Demo
[3] Release Notes 1.5.3:  
http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Features/SMW%2B_release_1.5.3
[4] Help section:  
http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Help:Help_section
[5] Send your feedback to sm...@on...