Semantic MediaWiki / News: Recent posts

The news section for Semantic MediaWiki is now at its website http://semantic-mediawiki.org. Using SMW's RSS export, this site offers also news feeds for subscription.

The first stable version the Semantic MediaWiki extension for MediaWiki [1], SMW 1.0, is now available. New features as compared to SMW 0.7 at a glance:

• Simplified semantic annotations: just one kind of annotation ("Property").
• Significant speedups for page rendering and loading
• Prettier and easier to understand interfaces
• Alternative inline query syntax {{#ask:...}}, fully compatible with MediaWiki templates, template parameters, and other extensions
• Semantic RSS feeds: subscribe to your favourite query results
• More expressive semantic querying: class and property hierarchies, equality
• Pattern matching, disjunctions, and inequality in query conditions
• Fewer and simpler datatypes, more tolerant parsing
• Better media support: better treatment of links to Image: and Media:
• Better internationalisation, new languages: Dutch, Chinese
• New experimental n-ary properties, for list-like property values
• Ontology import re-enabled (simple annotation import)
• Support for upcoming MediaWiki 1.12
• Many many bugfixes and minor improvements... read more

The third (and probably final) release candidate for the upcoming stable version 1.0 of the Semantic MediaWiki extension for MediaWiki [1] is now available. This update adds the long requested feature of having full interoperability of inline queries, templates, and other extensions, via a new #ask parser function. It also re-enables the datatype Boolean, and the service links, e.g. to online maps relating to geographic coordinates.... read more

The second release candidate for the upcoming stable version 1.0 of the Semantic MediaWiki extension for MediaWiki [1] is now available. This update fixes a number of bugs, improves the input processing for the datatypes URI and Geographic coordinates, adds new translations for French and Chinese, and speeds up the RDF export.

SMW 1.0-RC1 runs on all current MediaWiki versions , but requires at least 1.10. More information is obtained via our online documentation [2] and mailinglists [3]. ... read more

The first release candidate for the upcoming stable version 1.0 of the Semantic MediaWiki extension for MediaWiki [1] is now available. Core changes include:
* Simplified semantic annotations: just one kind of annotation ("Property").
* Significant speedup (both server and network load substantially reduced).
* Prettier and easier to understand interfaces.
* Alias strings for all SMW elements.
* More expressivity for semantic querying.
* New and/or improved datatypes.
* Improved maintenance special pages.
* New experimental n-ary properties, allowing property values to consist of a list of entries.
* Ontology import re-enabled (simple annotation import)

SMW 1.0-RC1 runs on all current MediaWiki versions , but requires at least 1.10. Some further improvements and an extended online documenation [2] are expected for the final release, but 1.0-RC1 is clearly the recommended version for new installations. Subscribe to our mailinglists [3] for latest news and discussions on the upcoming release.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/
[2] http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Help:Semantics
[3] semediawiki-user@lists.sourceforge.net

The Semantic MediaWiki extension for MediaWiki [1] has just been released in version 0.7. Core changes include:

• New special pages for searching and browsing data, in particular Special:Browse. These replace the old Special:SearchTriple.
• Additional options for formatting results of inline queries supporting templates, transclusion of result pages, and counting of results.
• New datatype for enumerated string values.
• Maintenance script for updating the semantic database, e.g. after importing text-only data.
• And a large number of smaller fixes and improvements.

SMW 0.7 runs on the current MediaWiki 1.9 and upcoming 1.10. Online documenation [2] still has to be updated to describe all new functions in detail. Development and usage is discussed on our mailinglists [3].

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/
[2] http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Help:Semantics
[3] semediawiki-user@lists.sourceforge.net

Semantic MediaWiki extension for MediaWiki [1] have been released in version 0.6 recently. Core changes include:

• New Special:Ask for directly browsing query results and for testing queries.
• New output format "timeline" for inline queries that deal with dates, based on Simile Timeline.
• Complete RDF export is now possible with a maintenance script. Various further improvements in RDF export.
• New "service links" feature: any attribute can provide configurable links to online services.... read more

As planned for some time now, SMW is about to move from the current CVS repository at SourceForge to MediaWiki's SVN repository [1]. Active developers already have had their logins and public keys registered, and everybody else has anonymous read-access. Detailed instructions can be found online [2].

Other than integrating SMW into the central MediaWiki repository, the move to SVN also enables anonymous users to access all files in real-time now, i.e. everyone can see every change in the repository as soon as it is made.... read more

With version 0.5, Semantic MediaWiki extension for MediaWiki [1] reaches beta status. But improved stability and cleaner code does not mean that there are no new features. Core changes include:

• Customised datatypes for unit conversion and customised display of units for each attribute. This also enables full localisation of all units of measurement.
• Support for importing vocabularies from external ontologies. For instance, elements of the wiki can now be mapped to the FOAF ontology during export.
• Significantly improved inline query performance and functionality (compared to 0.4). Unit support for inline queries. Desired output unit can be adjusted through query.
• New attribute datatypes for URLs and URIs, secured by a blacklist to prevent technically problematic URIs.
• New attribute datatype for temperature, since this cannot be defined by a linear custom unit conversion.
• Improved Special:Relations and Special:Attributes, including a quicklink to searching occurrences of some annotation.... read more

Semantic MediaWiki aims at the inclusion of "semantic web" features into MediaWiki, the software powering Wikipedia [1]. Users are enabled to enrich wiki-articles with bits of machine-readable information in a simple and integrated fashion. This data is used for enabling powerful search functions in the wiki, and allows developers to write software that harvests the wiki's knowledge for external use. Details are available on the project homepage and testsite [2].... read more

The project Semantic MediaWiki aims at the inclusion of "semantic web" features into MediaWiki, the software powering Wikipedia [1]. Users are enabled to enrich wiki-articles with bits of machine-readable information in a simple and integrated fashion. Yet this data opens great opportunities for improved searching and browsing, and will allow developers to write software that feasts on Wikipedias immense knowledge. Further details are available on the project homepage and testsite [2].... read more

The project Semantic MediaWiki aims at the inclusion of "semantic web" features into MediaWiki, the software powering Wikipedia [1]. Users are enabled to enrich wiki-articles with bits of machine-readable information in a simple and integrated fashion. Yet this data opens great opportunities for improved searching and browsing, and will allow developers to write software that feasts on Wikipedias immense knowledge. Detailed information and implementation plans are available on the project homepage and testsite [2].

With the release 0.2 [3], the project reaches alpha status, meaning that the general architecture and basic functionality is in place. Semantic MeidaWiki is installed easily as an extension module to the current MediaWiki. Improved features in 0.2 are

• support for attributes of the form [[attribute:=value]], including support for attribute type declaration and various datatypes,
• reworked search engine Special:TripleSearch, supporting searches for link types and attribute values,
• built-in conversion between common units of measurement, so that users can enter attribute values in their preferred unit; converted values are accesible via tooltips and used to simplify the user interface,
• support for "semantic templates,"
• visually improved infobox (factsheet) at article bottom,
• improved internal storage architecture, enabling future transition to an RDF-triplestore with improved query support.... read more

The project Semantic MediaWiki aims at the inclusion of "Semantic Web" features into MediaWiki, the software powering Wikipedia [1]. Users are enabled to enrich wiki-articles with bits of machine-readable information in a simple and integrated fashion. Yet this data opens great opportunities for improved searching and browsing, and will allow developers to write software that feasts on Wikipedias immense knowledge. Detailed information and implementation plans are available on the project homepage [2].... read more