Dear Vocbenchers,

VocBench 2.1 is finally out!

Its release date has been slightly delayed due to various requests for features we received in this last month  (and consequent bugfixes and further features which we later discovered as necessarily).

The positive side of all this is that this 2.1 will sound more as a “2.5”, given the large amount of news we stuffed inside it.

Here is a very short list resuming the core big-news of VB2.1:

• A completely rebuilt installation mechanism for an headache-free installation experience!
• Self-installing DB, with auto-updating scripts
• Wizard-driven system configuration, with import/export of configuration profiles
• SPARQL module: query/update content directly through the SPARQL query language for RDF; syntax completion & highlight
• Multi scheme management: now concepts can be shared among different schemes
• RSS feeds for all editing actions
• Search Engine: switch between standard sparql based search and OWLIM enhanced full text search

We are particularly happy about the improvements in the installation procedure: this means VB will be easier and easier not only to install, but also to update. The self-updating mechanism for the DB will assure that no manual changes are required on the DB scheme/data from version to version, nor that the DB has to be manually imported. The wizard driven configuration and the revision of the whole configuration itself will allow for a very quick initialization of the system, with further details being fine-tuned once the system is already on. Also, the configuration settings can be exported and later reimported when installing a newer version.

The documentation page is still on: http://vocbench.uniroma2.it/documentation/

and in particular the changes in the installation procedure have been reported here: https://aims-fao.atlassian.net/wiki/display/VB/Installation

The binary download is available as usual on the download page: https://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/vocbench/downloads.

Check here the 2.1 download: https://bitbucket.org/art-uniroma2/vocbench/downloads/VOCBENCH_2.1.zip

Last but not the least, another very good news: a detailed user manual will come in the next days, edited by the FAO Agrovoc team. It is almost ready, and it needs only minor revisions to take into account the latest “touches” we brought to VB before releasing it.

Our thankful acknowledgement to Peter Winstanley (Scottish Government specialist on data and metadata standards) who provided his precious help in revising this forthcoming manual...

…and a big thank to this rising user community as a whole for the continuous positive and encouraging feedback we receive!

The VocBench team