[SMW-devel] [News] SMW 1.8 released

[Markus K. <ma...@se...>]

Dear all,

we are happy to announce the release of the new Semantic MediaWiki 
version SMW 1.8 [1]. A record number of people have contributed to this 
release, and a large number of changes have been made, both visible and 
internal. Major new features of SMW 1.8 include:

* New data storage: more efficient, less database activity
* Interface improvements in Special:Ask
* New atom and RSS printer
* SMW now provides information about #ask queries used on the wiki [2]
* Support for #subobjects without a name
* Ask API now stable, with added continuation support

Moreover, a large number of bugs have been fixed, compatibility to all 
recent MW versions has been ensured, a lot of internal improvements have 
been made, and translations have been added. Many internal changes 
prepare further improvements in upcoming versions. The great new 
Semantic Result Formats 1.8 also is based on SMW 1.8 -- it will be 
released shortly.


== Extensions for SMW 1.8 ==

Latest versions of major SMW extensions are compatible with the new 
release. In particular this involves Semantic Forms, Semantic Maps 2.0, 
Semantic Drilldown 1.2.4, Semantic Internal Objects 0.7, and the amazing 
new Semantic Result Formats 1.8. There are known issues with "distance 
queries" in S Maps and with "remote autocompletion" in S Forms.


== Installation and Upgrade ==

To get the new version, you can download the file package [3] (includes 
the required version 0.5.1 of the Validator extension) or pull directly 
from git using the tag "1.8" [4]. Installation instructions are at [5]. 
Users who upgrade existing installations will need to refresh their data 
(you can continue using the old data until this is done). It is not 
difficult, but please do read the upgrade instructions [5].

Users who are now running the git master branch should be aware that 
this branch will soon become the place of SMW 1.9 development, and may 
thus be less stable than in recent weeks. You can switch to the release 
tag "1.8" for stability [4].


== The most important bit ==

SMW 1.8 was a team effort that had an amazing amount of support from too 
many people to list here. We would not have this release without the 
significant contributions from James "Hong Kong" and Nischay Nahata. 
Karsten Hoffmeyer once more did a great job in getting the documentation 
ready for the release. Further thanks are due to the Wikimedia 
Foundation, Wikimedia Germany e.V., Google Inc., and to the University 
of Oxford who each supported some of us in doing this work.


We hope you enjoy the new release.

Cheers,

Markus & Jeroen


[1] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki_1.8.0
[2] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Special_property_Has_query
[3] 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/semediawiki/files/semediawiki/Semantic%20MediaWiki%201.8/
[4] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Download#Git
[5] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation