[Semediawiki-user] SMW 0.4.3 bonus release is out!

[Markus <ma...@ai...>]

Hi all,

after 48 hours of coding (*puh*), I have uploaded an intermediate release o=
f=20
SMW on SourceForge. If you want to upgrade, you need to recreate your=20
SMW_LocalSettings.php, since some variables have changed there.

The release addresses a number of issues and limitations with the current=20
Inline Query mechanism, in particular:

* Inline queries are much more efficient.=20
** Typical queries can be executed in linear space (assuming that the DB is=
=20
not dump and eliminates duplicate rows eagerly).
** Subqueries now have a much better behaviour and should not strongly=20
increase the required resources.
** If the query performance still does not scale up to your use case, there=
=20
are added variables you can set to further restrict them in a meaningful wa=
y.

* Inline queries are more powerful. There are quite some new features for=20
output formatting and searching:
** If you want to search for all articles that have *some* annotation for a=
=20
given property, use the syntax [[relation::+]] or [[attribute:=3D+]].
** If you say [[relationname::*]] or [[attributename:=3D*]], all values of =
these=20
annotations are printed, no matter how many there are.
** You can also print the immediate categories given to the selected articl=
es=20
by [[Category:*]].
** You can restrict the search to a certain namespace. E.g. [[Relation:+]]=
=20
searches only in the Relation namespace. The main namespace is usually=20
[[:+]]. For searching for categories, use [[:Category:+]]. This feature can=
 be=20
combined with disjunctions, e.g [[Help:+||:+]] for searching in Help and=20
Main.
** You can now use all output formats with all kinds of results, i.e. not o=
nly=20
'table' can be used to print more than one "column". E.g. a query could=20
return a list of names of some persons with their assigned email addresses=
=20
printed in parentheses.
** If you don't want the names of the relations, attributes, etc. to be=20
printed (e.g. if you do not have a table output and only one non-subject=20
value), you can set the parameter <ask headers=3D"hide">. As before, you ca=
n=20
also select the label for some output by writing [[relation::*|your label]]=
=20
etc.
** You can give a label to the first entry of each result (the subject) by=
=20
setting the parameter <ask mainlabel=3D"Your label goes here.">. By this, y=
ou=20
can also force the subject to be shown in cases where it is normally hidden=
=20
(for queries where one or more subjects where specified explicitly by using=
=20
[[Subject_article_name]]).

* The code for inline queries now is more readable and can easier be extend=
ed=20
in the future. There also have been quite some internal cleanups in the=20
datatype parsing code, but these should not have major effects on usage.=20
However, you can now quite savely switch on the reporting of Notices in PHP.

* There are some bugs less now. (And maybe some more in other places ;-)


Of course, the release has not been tested extensively, so there might be s=
ome=20
bugs lurking here and there. But in general inline queries 0.4.3 are a larg=
e=20
improvement over inline queries 0.4.1. The official documentation for the n=
ew=20
queries still has to be done.

Cheers,

Markus

=2D-=20
Markus Kr=F6tzsch
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe
ma...@ai...        phone +49 (0)721 608 7362
www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/     fax +49 (0)721 693  717