Sesame 2.7.1 is a maintenance release, fixing a number of issues in a.o. datatype handling, parser configuration, and SPARQL query evaluation.

For a full overview of fixes, see the JIRA Changelog.

Sesame 2.7.1 can be downloaded here. The user documentation and API Javadoc can be found on our temporary documentation site at openrdf.callimachus.net.

In order to help out users of Sesame who have been caught by the old Aduna maven repository being taken offline, Ontotext, creators of OWLIM, have made their internal mirror of the Aduna maven repository publicly and freely available. The repository contains a large number of older Sesame releases, and users who depend on these older versions need only add the Ontotext maven repository to their project setup to be able to retrieve these maven artifacts.

The Ontotext repository is at http://maven.ontotext.com/content/repositories/aduna/, and can also be browsed via Ontotext's Nexus browser .

To add the Ontotext mirror maven repository to your project, add the following to your maven settings or POM:

  <repositories>
     ...
     <repository>
          <releases>
              <enabled>true</enabled>
          </releases>
          <snapshots>
              <enabled>false</enabled>
          </snapshots>
          <id>ontotext-aduna-releases</id>
          <name>Ontotext mirror of Aduna releases</name>
          <url>http://maven.ontotext.com/content/repositories/aduna/</url>
     </repository> 
  </repositories>

Starting with release 2.6.10, all new Sesame releases will be available via Maven Central, so if your project depends on one of these newer versions, you need not change anything.

April 16, 2013 - We are very pleased to announce the first stable release of Sesame 2.7.

Sesame 2.7 is a major update of the framework, incorporating several improvements in the core APIs, as well as numerous bug fixes, new features, and useful improvements.

Since several core APIs (including the SAIL API and the Repository API) have undergone changes, we urge both users of the framework and independent implementors of SAIL backends to read the upgrade notes.

Some of the highlights of this release:

• Sesame Maven artifacts for this release are now available in Maven Central
• Sesame has been officially updated to require Java 6
• SAIL API overhaul: introduction of SailConnection.begin() to explicitly indicate transaction start. See the upgrade notes for details.
• RepositoryConnection overhaul: setAutoCommit() replaced by begin(), isAutoCommit() replaced by isActive(). See the upgrade notes for details.
• The Model interface: an extension of Graphs with convenient methods for quick manipulation of collections of RDF statements in memory.
• Multiple large improvements in the OpenRDF Workbench, including support for basic HTTP authentication, paging support of query results, and bookmarking of queries.
• The Federation SAIL: configurable querying over federated Sesame stores. Rio parsing/writing support for the N-Quads format
• HTTPRepository now supports background parsing/concurrent reading of results
• The Rio Turtle parser has been updated to comply with the latest W3C Working Draft.
• 99.9% compliance with the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language W3C Recommendation.
• full compliance with the SPARQL 1.1 Protocol Recommendation, the SPARQL 1.1 Update Recommendation, and the SPARQL 1.1 Graph Store HTTP Protocol Recommendation.

Sesame 2.7.0 can be downloaded here. The user documentation and API Javadoc can be found on our temporary documentation site at openrdf.callimachus.net.

As this is a major new release, we are eager for you to try it out and test it and let us know what you think of the improvements and new features. We would welcome any feedback you might have, you can use the Sesame Discussion mailinglist for this purpose.

This is the second beta release for Sesame 2.7. Sesame 2.7 is a major update of the framework, incorporating several improvements in the core APIs, as well as numerous bug fixes, new features, and useful improvements.

Since several core APIs (including the SAIL API and the Repository API) have undergone changes, we urge both users of the framework and independent implementors of SAIL backends to read the upgrade notes.

Some of the highlights of this release:

• SAIL API overhaul: introduction of SailConnection.prepare() as an optional operation to support two-phase commit. See the upgrade notes for details.
• Sesame has been officially updated to require Java 6.
• The Model interface: an extension of Graphs with convenient methods for quick manipulation of collections of RDF statements in memory.
• The Federation SAIL: configurable querying over federated Sesame stores.
• The RIO Turtle parser has been updated to comply with the latest W3C Working Draft.
• Several further improvements in SPARQL 1.1 support to bring up to date with the Proposed Recommendation published on November 8.

As this is a beta-release, we are eager for you to try it out and test it, but we advise not to update your production systems to this release just yet. We would welcome any feedback you might have, you can use the Sesame Discussion mailinglist for this purpose.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• upgrade notes
• release documentation (note: release documentation is now hosted on Callimachus)
• API Javadoc
• distribution files

This is the first beta release for Sesame 2.7. Sesame 2.7 is a major update of the framework, incorporating several improvements in the core APIs, as well as numerous bug fixes, new features, and useful improvements.

Since several core APIs (including the SAIL API and the Repository API) have undergone changes, we urge both users of the framework and independent implementors of SAIL backends to read the upgrade notes.

Some of the highlights of this release:

• Sesame Maven artifacts for this release are now available in Maven Central
• SAIL API overhaul: introduction of SailConnection.begin() to explicitly indicate transaction start. See the upgrade notes for details.
• RepositoryConnection overhaul: setAutoCommit() replaced by begin(), isAutoCommit() replaced by isActive(). See the upgrade notes for details.
• Multiple large improvements in the OpenRDF Workbench, including support for basic HTTP authentication, paging support of query results, and bookmarking of queries.
• Rio parsing/writing support for the N-Quads format
• HTTPRepository now supports background parsing/concurrent reading of results
• Several improvements in SPARQL 1.1 support to bring up to date with the Proposed Recommendation published on November 8.

As this is a beta-release, we are eager for you to try it out and test it, but we advise not to update your production systems to this release just yet. We would welcome any feedback you might have, you can use the Sesame Discussion mailinglist for this purpose.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• upgrade notes
• release documentation
• API Javadoc
• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-rc7 is a bug fix release. It fixes an issue in the auditing repository initialization code and permits both the auditing repository and blob store to reuse the same version bundle.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-rc6 avoids invalid windows file names. xsd:hexBinary is now used as default for byte[] objects to align with XQJ mapping. Object beans now auto-refresh on @Sparql update execution. The auditing repository vocab has been changed to be a more accurate use of PROV (activity URI and bundle URI have now been split).

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

As part of a series of planned upgrades to our community site and development environment, the Sesame code repository has been moved to Bitbucket. We have switched from the old Subversion system to Git, which will make cooperation between Sesame developers much easier and quicker.

The new Sesame code repository can be found at https://bitbucket.org/openrdf/sesame.

Due to the move, the maven snapshot repository will temporarily no longer update when changes are made to the code. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Of course, all Sesame releases are still available in the usual locations.

Sesame 2.6.10 is a bugfix release that addresses a small number of issues, including a bug in SPARQL parsing of nested property paths, a web proxy handling problem and a garbage collection issue in large-scale parallel query processing.

See the release notes for details.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-rc5 changes the auditing vocabulary to use a subset of the prov-o vocabulary. See the new auditing repository for details. This is the last major new feature before a general 2.0 release.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.6.9 is a bugfix release that addresses various bugs and also contains a few small usability improvemnents. Amongst the improvements are support in the SPARQL engine for a fixed number of default namespaces without having to explicitly declare them, a bugfix in the SPARQL integer division operator, and a fix in the Workbench's support for the Binary RDF format.

See the release notes for details.

Development focus for Sesame will now shift to a new major release, 2.7. This new release will contain several improvements in (remote) transaction handling, and hopefully some great new features like N-Quads parsing/writing, improved support for bulk uploading, further improvements in SPARQL 1.1 support, and more. Barring any mission-critical bugs that turn up, we do not expect to do another 2.6.x release.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

Sesame 2.6.8 fixes a critical issue in SPARQL INSERT DATA execution, and addresses a few other problems. See the release notes for details.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

We are pleased to announce Sesame version 2.6.7. This release fixes a large number of reported issues. Some of the highlights:

• SPARQL SAMPLE() function now returns a true random sampling.
• Bug fix in Native Store transaction status logging.
• SPARQL 1.1 Update support improved to full compliance with current Working Draft.
• Improved dataset handling for update sequences.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-rc4 is a bug fix release. 2.0-rc4 prevents some @Sparql NoResultExceptions and instead returns null. It also fixes a deadlock in the OptimisticRepository.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-rc3 introduces the ability to inject Advice code around method execution based on the retained method annotations. This allows developers to inject control blocks around a method simply by adding a Java annotation. See the documentation for details on Advice.

This release also updates to the latest Sesame 2.6.6 and removes support for msg:script and msg:xslt (these can now be easily implemented using Advice). There is also some performance improvements in the OWL compiler and bug fixes as reported by users, many of which also appear in 2.0-rc2.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

We are pleased to announce Sesame version 2.6.6. This release fixes over 30 reported issues. Some of the highlights:

• Several optimizations in query evaluation (especially for queries involving subselects and arbitrary-length property paths).
• OpenRDF Workbench now auto-detects RDF format for uploads
• RemoteRepositoryManager now supports complete removal of a server-side Repository (including its datadir)

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

We are pleased to announce Sesame version 2.6.5. This is a bugfix release addressing a large number of bugs and improvements in SPARQL 1.1 Query and Update support, most importantly fixing several critical issues with subquery evaluation. In addition, this release offers a couple of new features and improvements, including better support for connecting to remote servers via proxies, configurable default datasets, and a more flexible RDFHandlerWrapper. See the Changelog for details.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

We are pleased to announce Sesame version 2.6.4. This is a bugfix release addressing a large number of bugs and improvements in SPARQL 1.1 Query and Update support, and bringing Sesame up-to-date with the January 5 revision of the SPARQL 1.1 W3C Working Drafts. See the Changelog for additional details.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

This is a big milestone, as AliBaba moves into RC stage. Changes in this release include: moving annotations to org.openrdf.annotations and using traditional Java naming conventions, removal of the object server, and the introduction of the keyword SAIL (light weight resource/keyword index).

Users depending on the object server are recommended to use the Callimachus server at callimachusproject.org. The Callimachus server is based on the previous AliBaba object server.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

We are pleased to announce Sesame version 2.6.3. This release introduces support for the SPARQL 1.1 Graph Store HTTP Protocol. See the updated Sesame system documentation for details. This new feature was developed by Ontotext in cooperation with Aduna.

In addition, Sesame 2.6.3 fixes several important issues discovered in previous releases. See the Changelog. for additional details.

This release introduces two major new features: BLOB store and Named Queries. The BLOB store is a library to store binary streams to disk by URI. It includes support for transaction isolation and reading past versions. The ObjectRepository has been extended to support integrating the two transactions together. The ObjectRepository interface has also been extended to store Named Queries by URI. This provides a consistent place to store often used queries. When combined with the OptimisticRepository, Named Queries are also aware when their query results last changed. This facilitates caching by making it easier to detect changes to matching graph pattern in the RDF store.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.6.2 is a maintenance release with a couple of important bug fixes in the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language implementation. For a detailed overview of fixes see the issue tracker.

Sesame 2.6.1 is a maintenance release with over 20 bug fixes and improvements. Some highlights include:

• Several major improvements and optimizations in SPARQL SERVICE federated query handling
• Complete reimplementation of arbitrary-length property path evaluation, resulting in a very substantial performance increase
• Support for SPARQL CSV and TSV result formats (experimental)
• Bugfixes in handling of aggregates, BIND clauses, IF-operators, and more

For a complete list of issues, see the Changelog.

The SPARQL 1.1 federation extensions in Sesame 2.6 have been contributed by fluidOps, in cooperation with Ontotext and Aduna.

We are very pleased to announce the release of Sesame 2.6.0. This is a major new release with some very exciting features, most importantly:

• SPARQL 1.1 Federation support
  Sesame 2.6.0 features support for the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language Federation extension as specified in the Last Call Working Draft. This enables the incredibly powerful possibility to directly query and integrate data from any public SPARQL endpoint.
• SPARQL Repository
  The SPARQLRepository enables you to programmaticaly connect to any SPARQL endpoint via the Repository API. It also offers the option to send custom HTTP headers (for example API keys) to endpoints which require this.
• User-configurable parser behaviour in Repository API
  You can now configure the way the parser handles validation, errors, and datatypes verification when uploading a file directly via the Repository API.

Apart from these features the release includes a number of bugfixes and minor improvements, see the Changelog for full details.

The SPARQL 1.1 federation extensions in Sesame 2.6.0 have been contributed by fluidOps, in cooperation with Ontotext and Aduna. We hope you enjoy the new features and look forward to receiving your feedback.

Sesame 2.5.1 is a maintenance release that fixes a substantial number of bugs discovered in the new SPARQL 1.1 Query/Update support. Additionally, it has a couple of improvements in the Rio RDF parser, most notably improved XML Schema Datatype validation, as well as literal language tag validation.

See the release notes for a full overview of all changes.

AliBaba 2.0-beta12 fixes a Java compile error on non-functional covariant properties. Non-functional properties will be compiled using their rdfs:range type and ignore any property restrictions on classes. Java does not support covariant overrides in Set parameters preventing any property type overrides on subclasses.

This release also fixes two issues in the optimistic repository. Calls to commit will no longer be blocked when a query evaluation is running. When triples are repeatedly added/removed within a transaction, on commit the last state will be persisted to the underlying RDF store.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

We are very pleased to announce the release of Sesame 2.5.0. This is a major new release with some very exciting features:

• SPARQL 1.1 Query Language support
  Sesame 2.5 features near-complete support for the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language Last Call Working Draft , including all new builtin functions and operators, improved aggregation behavior and more.
• SPARQL 1.1 Update support
  Sesame 2.5 has full support for the new SPARQL 1.1 Update Working Draft. The Repository API has been extended to support creation of SPARQL Update operations, the SAIL API has been extended to allow Update operations to be passed directly to the underlying backend implementation for optimized execution. Also, the Sesame Workbench application has been extended to allow easy execution of SPARQL update operations on your repositories.
• SPARQL 1.1 Protocol support
  Sesame 2.5 fully supports the SPARQL 1.1 Protocol for RDF Working Draft. The Sesame REST protocol has been extended to allow update operations via SPARQL on repositories. A Sesame server therefore now automatically publishes any repository as a fully compliant SPARQL endpoint.
• Binary RDF support
  Sesame 2.5 includes a new binary RDF serialization format. This format has been derived from the existing binary tuple results format. It's main features are reduced parsing overhead and minimal memory requirements (for handling really long literals, a.o.t.).

Sesame 2.5 SPARQL improvements have been made possible by Ontotext, in cooperation with Aduna. We hope you enjoy the new features and look forward to receiving your feedback.

See the release notes for a full overview of all changes.

Just after publishing the 2.4.1 release, we found a serious regression in Sesame's NativeStore. This release fixes that regression.

See the release notes. for a full overview of all changes.

Sesame 2.4.1 is a bugfix release, fixing various reported issues in the new SPARQL 1.1 query functionality and a number of stability/scalability improvements. Some highlights:

• SPARQL GROUP BY with complex expressions as arguments are now evaluated correctly (SES-774)
• SUM and AVG now silently ignore non-numeric values (SES-788)
• Performance improvements in processing of aggregate operators (SES-789)
• Fix for native store data corruption issue (SES-776)
• Various other fixes and improvements in handling of property paths and aggregate operators

See the release notes. for a full overview of all changes.

This releases fixes a few trivial bugs in the compiler and server.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

This release does not include the AliBaba federation and depends on Sesame 2.4.0. This release also includes some minor bug fixes in the OWL compiler. It is recommended that those using the federation continue using 2.0-beta9 until an alternative is available.

Sesame repositories will include support for SPARQL 1.1 SERVICE federation in future versions that will contain much of the functionality of a federation. Some work has also been discussed to provide a facade to a SPARQL 1.1 federation (similar to the interface in AliBaba). Monitor the Sesame mailing list for future announcements.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

We are very proud to announce the release of Sesame 2.4.0. This is a major new release featuring support for SPARQL 1.1 Query.

Sesame 2.4.0 implements all features of SPARQL 1.1 Query as outlined in the October 14 W3C Working Draft, with the exception of basic federated query. SPARQL 1.1 for Sesame is developed by Ontotext in cooperation with Aduna.

The list of new SPARQL query features includes:

• Use of expressions in the SELECT clause
• Aggregates (COUNT, MIN, MAX, AVG, SUM, GROUP_CONCAT), HAVING and GROUP BY
• Property paths
• Subqueries
• Negation: (NOT) EXISTS and MINUS
• Set membership: (NOT) IN
• Conditionals: IF
• Various new builtin functions: COALESCE, BNODE, IRI, isNumeric, strLang, strDt

Apart from this impressive array of new query language features, Sesame 2.4.0 also implements a number of bug fixes and improvements, including scalability and performance improvement in the Native store. For a full overview, see the release notes.

AliBaba 2.0-beta9 will now infer owl:equivalentClass, owl:oneO, owl:complementOf, owl:intersectionOf, and owl:unionOf on and with named classes (much like how Elmo does). This release also has some fixes to the message generation including automatically converting Java primitive wrappers and Java strings into JavaScript primitives when running msg:script. A bug in the optimistic repository has also been fixed to remove triples that were added within the same transaction.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-beta7 supports using absolute http- and file URLs in @sparql annotations to allow distributed management of the queries. Java classes can now be passed as parameters for @sparql annotated methods using the @name annotation. Methods with the same method name no longer clash when accessing @iri annotated fields. And, the auditing sail has been improved to handle larger transactions.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.3.3 fixes various issues that have been uncovered in customer projects during the past months. This release will further improve Sesame's stability in business(-like) environments. It contains various fixes related to remote repository access, three NativeStore related fixes and one MemoryStore fix. The full list of changes is available in the Change log.

This first alpha-release of Sesame 2.4 contains support for various SPARQL 1.1 Query features as specified in the current SPARQL 1.1 Query Working Draft. The implementation of SPARQL 1.1 in Sesame is led by Ontotext.

The list of features includes:

• Use of expressions in the SELECT clause.
• Use of aggregates (COUNT, MIN, MAX, AVG, SUM)
• Use of HAVING and GROUP BY
• Use of Subqueries
• Negation: (NOT) EXISTS and MINUS
• Set membership: (NOT) IN
• Various new builtin functions: COALESCE, BNODE, IRI, isNumeric, strLang, strDt
• Partial support for property paths. Current support includes path sequences (/), path alternatives (|), zero or one matches (?), specific numbers of occurrences ({n, m}), and inverted properties (^). Not yet supported are arbitrary-length paths (+ and * wildcards) and negated properties (!).

As this is an alpha release we advise you to use it for testing and evaluation purposes only. We are actively looking for your feedback in terms of bug reports and other problems you may encounter. We'd love to hear your comments!

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-beta6 supports a new messaging vocabulary to simplify creating dynamic methods at runtime. If your are using the object vocabulary please have a look and provide feed back. The object vocabulary will be deprecated later this year.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

This release deprecates groovy script support, replaced by Mozilla Rhino's EMCA script (provided with most JDKs). This release has better support for HTTPRepositories and also includes support for datatype alias (using owl:equivalentClass). Class and property URIs with '-' and '.' are now replaced with '_' in Java names.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

This release was driven by the new Callimachus project. It fixes a number of bugs in the Web server and object behaviour methods. For more information about Callimachus see callimachusproject.org.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.3.2 wraps up various bug fixes from the past months. Kudos to all who reported these bugs and/or helped fixing them! Full details are available in the Change log.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-beta2 is primarily a performance release. It can now load triples in bulk faster and can serve cached HTTP responses really fast. There were also some critical bug fixes in the HTTP caching package.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-beta1 has received a lot of work in the server and numerous bug fixes across most modules. The server has switched to using Apache's HttpComponents NIO transport. XSLT and groovy support has improved. The auditing module has been revised to support storing (and indexing) all removed triples to give an accurate snapshot of the state of the RDF store at any moment. The optimistic repository now supports monotonic, snapshot, and serializable transaction isolations. Please post any questions you have to the mailing list. Thanks!

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

AliBaba 2.0-alpha4 is fully compatible with alpha3, but with bug fixes and better support for using OWL/turtle messages. This release also provides better OWL documentation (see doc sidebar) and the ability to encode URNs into URL paths (see server command line for more information). Please post any further suggestions to improve the documentation to the mailing list. Thanks!

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.3.1 is mostly a bugfix release. The only new feature is the ability for the command line console to handle HTTP authentication (contributed by Daniel Hahn). For details, see the Change log for 2.3.1.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

AliBaba is a RESTful/RDF library for distributed persistence. This release includes new authentication and authorization, server side transformations (including xslt), client side RESTful interface, and better support for HTTP protocols. It also includes simplifications to the object message ontology and improved RDF compilation.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.3.0 has major improvements on three subjects: NativeStore performance, query optimization and the SeRQL query language.

The NativeStore's performance for processing updates has been improved. Updates in general should be a bit faster now, but the removal of (small sets of) statements has been improved dramatically.

The query optimizer has been improved for various query types. Queries with nested unions, nested optional joins and/or result ordering can now be processed in a potentially more efficient way, resulting in better query performance.

The SeRQL query language has been extended with new syntax. First of all, all of SPARQL's functionality is now also available in SeRQL. This includes Order By, Union of path expressions, SameTerm, Str, LangMatches, Regex and Reduced. Also, the IN-operator can now also be used on a list of values to express that a variable must be bound to one of these values.

Finally, there's the usual set of bug fixes.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.3.0
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

We have opened two new mailing lists for Sesame and related software on SourceForge. These new mailing lists will be replacing the existing ones as well as the forum on openrdf.org.

The sesame-general mailing list is meant for questions and discussions about Sesame and related software. It replaces both the forum on openrdf.org (which some people have trouble accessing as of lately) as well as the (hardly used) sesame-devel lists.

The sesame-announce mailing list will replace the current sesame-interest list. This is mostly a kind of rename for the list to clarify it's role. All subscribers of the old list will be moved to the new list by us.

AliBaba is a Resource-Oriented Framework for RDF Web applications. This release add dynamic RDF schema compilation and built-in Web cache.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.3-pr1 is a preview release for the upcoming 2.3.0 release. It wraps up all 2.3 issues that have been resolved so far. This version is (to be) used in the Alibaba release announced below, among other projects.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.3-pr1
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

This release fixes the bugs reported in the previous version. User are recommended to upgrade at their convince. This release includes the following changes:

• Add @localized to skos labels.
• Add warning when multiple concept classes are used together.
• Fix enumeration compiler errors with owl:oneOf.
• Use base URI when loading ontologies.
• Work around invalid RDF namespaces.
• Support numeric prefixed local parts in name.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

This is the first public release of AliBaba. AliBaba combines a collection of publicly and privately developed projects integrated into a coherent platform for developing RDF applications. AliBaba includes an application server, modelling language, persistence framework, RDF federation, and a concurrency controller.

This alpha release is made available for public feedback. Users are encouraged to discuss and share their experience with this release at OpenRDF.org to help improve the API and the usefulness of the software.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Today, we've released a preview release to give an impression of what Sesame 3.0 will bring. Some of the highlights for Sesame 3.0 are:

• improved semantics for blank nodes
• improved Sail and Repository APIs
• configurable transaction isolation levels
• repository meta data
• new Cursors replacing Iterations for improved performance and concurrency handling
• a new and improved server implementation that is easier to embed
• a new Model interface for non-transactional (in-memory) RDF graphs

Please note that this is an alpha release, one should only use it for evaluation purposes.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Sesame 3.0 Preview: An Open Source Framework for RDF Data
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Sesame 2.2.4 has been released today. It fixes three issues over the previous version. Most notably, it fixes a regression in the query optimizer that had been introduced in 2.2.3. See the release notes for more details.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.2.4
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

This is the first release to support unmodified POJO classes as Elmo concepts. It adds new and faster persist methods and also changes the behaviour of merge to only add new values and does not remove existing values. Most of the changes in this release were from user suggestions and feedback - thank you. For details on the improved API please see the Elmo User Guide or the new Getting Started Guide.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Hot on the heels of Sesame 2.2.2 comes another update: 2.2.3. Shortly after publishing 2.2.2 we discovered that the javadoc documentation was missing from the distribution files. Also, a serious issue was found in one of the query optimizers, affecting the use of particular queries with Sesame. These two issues have been fixed in this new release.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.2.3
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Sesame 2.2.2 fixes a critical issue in the NativeStore, which potentially leads to a corruption of data files. Earlier 2.2.x releases are affected by this bug. All users of these releases are advised to upgrade to 2.2.2 as soon as possible.

Another highlight of this release is a major performance improvements in the clean-up process of the MemoryStore, which removes deprecated statements in a background thread. Please see the release notes for a complete list of changes.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.2.2
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Sesame 2.2.1 is mostly a bugfix release. Internally, a Reduced node has been added to the query algebra, allowing some further query evaluation optimizations, most notably for the MulgaraSail. The Mulgara dependency was updated to version 2.0.6, which fixes the Java 5 compatibility of previous releases, a.o.t.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.2.1
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Sesame 2.1.4 fixes two issues in that have been found in the previous release. See the change log for details.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.2
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

This release fixes a few important bugs found in the previous version and has received significant changes in the code generation model. Compiling an ontology into a jar is now, not only more efficient, but has also been significantly enhanced thanks to the contributions from Zepheira. It is now possible to declare method interfaces and implementations directly in the ontology. This allows projects to use the ontology as a complete formal description of the concepts and behaviours of a given domain. For more details please see the Elmo User Guide.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.2 is a considerable step forward for Sesame. Apart from the usual bug fixes, it features a new Mulgara store, a better query optimizer and an extended and improved web front-end (Workbench). Sesame now also has supports query time-outs, loading of zip and gzip streams and store locking.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.2
• Getting Started With Sesame
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

This marks the first stable release of the Sesame driver for Mulgara. This release depends on Mulgara 2.0.5, which is included in the lib directory of the openrdf-mulgara-sail-2.2 files. This release maps blank nodes between the Sesame interface and the underlying Mulgara database, and it does not guarantee blank node ID or Java BNode reference preservation in all situations. BNodes are also not support as contexts. Most of the effort in this release has been on the stability of the Sesame driver, as a result only inner joins are being optimized in this release. The Mulgara driver files can be found with the Sesame distribution files.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• distribution files

Sesame 2.1.3 is a bug fix release. Please see the release notes for a full list of changes.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.1.3
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Elmo 1.1 adds some performance improvements, clarifies some of the module terminology, and advances the codegen module to support a broader range of ontologies - changing the command-line arguments slightly (watch out). Also included in this release are a few bug fixes. Thanks to those to took the time to test this snapshot, your feedback has been incorporated.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Elmo has reached its 1.0 milestone. Building on the versions before, this release adds improved factory support and removes deprecated behaviours in the module, manager, and queries. This marks a stable feature set that will continue to be supported in the future. Please share your experience with this and any ideas you have for the future in the forum. Thanks to everyone who participated in testing the past milestones, your efforts are reflected in the quality of this release.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.1.2 is a bugfix release that squashes several bugs from the 2.1 version. Details are available in the release notes.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log for 2.1.1
• Change log for 2.1.2
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Sesame 2.2-beta2 is a preview release of the first Sesame version with Mulgara support. Mulgara is a native RDF database, written in Java and designed to scale to hundreds of millions of RDF statements. Both SPARQL and SeRQL query languages are supported using the provided Mulgara store, making this the first 100% SPARQL compliant Mulgara backed RDF store available. Other Sesame stores also include performances optimizations with this release. Thanks to the Mulgara team for their cooperation in making this release possible!

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Joint press release from Aduna and Zepheira
• Mulgara website
• Sesame distribution files
• OpenRDF Mulgara distribution files

Sesame 2.1 adds support for storing RDF data in a relational database using the RDBMS Sail. Currently, MySQL and PostgreSQL are supported. MySQL version 5.0 and PostgreSQL versions 8.2 and 8.3 have been tested, but the implementation will probably also work on other versions. Please let us know about other RDBMS versions that do or do not work. As usual, this release also includes a number of bug fixes, see the release notes for details.

Maven users, please note that the Sesame maven artifacts have been renamed to be able to distinguish between the various OpenRDF projects. The groupId for Sesame artifacts has been changed to org.openrdf.sesame, and all openrdf- prefixes have been changed to sesame- prefixes. Finally, the new artifacts are now available from our brand new maven repository.

rdfs:seeAlso:

• Change log
• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Elmo 1.0-rc2 is now released. It includes better handling of class-loaders and improved class mapping. This version now allows annotations to be placed on concrete classes (for merging) and adds setType and setQName methods to ElmoQuery. Many reported bugs have been fixed and a GA release is expected soon so keep on sharing your comments.

Available resources:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Elmo 1.0-rc1 has just been released. This release fixes many bugs that have been reported in beta2 and includes improvements both above and below the surface. Included in this release is better support for HTTP repositories, improved support for ontology and concept generation, and support for abstract behaviours. It is built on the stable 2.0.1 version of Sesame.

This release marks the beginning of the end to the long awaited 1.0 release and it is expected to be relatively short. Please grab a copy and put it through rigorous testing and report back in the forum. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs and made suggestions - the release is much better for it.

Available resources:

• release documentation
• distribution files

Sesame 2.0.1 fixes a number of bugs that have been found in 2.0, but contains some improvements too. First of all, the last two SPARQL issues have been resolved, which means that Sesame now passes the complete SPARQL compliance test suite. Second, we corrected a bug that seriously affected query optimization for the memory store. The update performance of the memory store has been improved too. Finally, some general query model optimizations have been implemented, which should improve the query performance of some queries on both the native store and the memory store.

The complete change log can be found here.

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

The SPARQL query language, protocol and query result format have been promoted to the W3C recommendation status yesterday. More info is available in the official press release.

Unfortunately the W3C press release references an outdated overview of SPARQL implementations where Sesame fails to comply to a considerable number of SPARQL features. As standard compliance is very important to us, we want to make clear that Sesame currently is 99% SPARQL compliant and that the remaining incompatibilities will be corrected soon.

Thanks to an overwhelming number of people that have tested the previous release candidates and reported any issues that surfaced, we can now proudly present Sesame, version 2.0!

After the second release candidate, only one serious issue was reported and fixed. We found and fixed some minor, non-critical issues ourselves and made some small improvements here and there, mostly related to HTTP communication and OpenRDF Workbench. All in all, we think the code is now sufficiently tested to call it 2.0-final.

The development focus will now shift to performance and scalability improvements. An RDBMS-based Sail implementation is currently under development and the first results look very promising. The performance of the native- and memory stores will also be improved. As there hasn't been put a lot of effort into this so far, we expect to achieve good results here.

The complete change log can be found here.

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Elmo 1.0-beta2 is now released. This version is built on the much improved Sesame 2.0-rc2. The stack is more stable and has seen changes in transactions, datasets and entity creation. The API has had some clarifications, so note some of the changes and enjoy the release.

References:

• Elmo User Guide (also available as PDF or one large HTML file)
• API reference
• Source reference
• distribution files

Sesame 2.0-rc2 fixes various bugs that have been found in the previous release candidate. We strongly advise everyone who is currently using 2.0-rc1 to update their Sesame libraries.

Thank you all for testing the first release candidate and for reporting the issues that you have encountered. These issues should all be fixed in this new release. In case you encounter any other issues, please let us know!

The complete change log can be found in the here.

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

We're out of beta!

After two years of hard work, with ten alpha- and beta releases, we are now nearing the completion of Sesame 2.0. The first Release Candidate for Sesame 2.0 has just been released, and it fixes the last few blocking issues for 2.0. To summarize the most important changes:

• The transaction isolation of the RDF stores has been reworked, the behaviour is now equivalent to the behaviour in JDBC/relational databases. As a result, the stores are now also better able to handle concurrent requests.
• Inferencing support has much improved. There is now a generic RDF Schema inferencer that replaces the store-specific inferencers and that fixes the issues with the existing inferencers. This new inferencer can be used on top of memory- and native stores. The "direct type hierarchy" inferencer (previously: virtual property inferencer), which infers the directType, directSubClassOf and directSubPropertyOf statements, can optionally be stacked on top of the RDF Schema inferencer. Performance for both inferencers has been also been improved.
• SPARQL support was further improved; query result ordering (ORDER BY) is now available.

Important update notice: Due to the changes in the inferencers, existing repositories that use an inferencer (e.g. "memory-rdfs") need to be reconfigured to use the new inferencer. This can be most easily done using the Sesame Console by dropping the concerning repositories and then re-creating them with the the same parameters. The existing data should be preserved in this process.

The complete change log can be found in the here.

We expect to be able to release the 2.0-final release in a few weeks. Any issues that surface in this release will have our full attention and will be fixed as soon as possible. So if you encounter any problems, please let us know via the forum or the issue tracker.

While you're here, you might as well have a look at our new poll.

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

We just released the sixth beta release for Sesame 2.0. We have put the three months since the previous release to good use. Highlights for this release are:

• SPARQL support
  Sesame now supports most of the SPARQL query language. There are only two things that remain on the TODO list for the next release: query result ordering (ORDER BY) and proper dataset support (partially implemented now).
• Improved query optimizer
  Until this release, the query optimizer only performed some fairly basic optimizations. This query optimizer has been improved considerably in this release, resulting in considerable to dramatic improvements to query evaluation performance.
• Console useability
  Feedback indicated that managing repository configurations using the console wasn't very intuitive. This has been improved, among other things. Please consult the (updated) user guide for instructions.

A complete overview of improvements can be found in the changelog.

We expect this release to be the last beta release for Sesame 2.0. Focus for the next release (Release Candidate 1) will be the transaction handling of the Sail implementations.

Thank you all for trying out the previous releases and for providing us with your feedback!

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• Sesame API javadoc
• distribution files

Elmo 1.0-beta1 is the start of the API stabilization period leading towards 1.0-final. This release targets easier adoption and the addition of some missed tools from earlier versions. Highlights to the API are better support for JPA including merge and refresh support, simplification of annotations and interceptors, more options for code generation, and easier to use concepts. This release also marks the come back of scutter and smusher with an updated interface. Thanks to everyone who participated through the rocky alpha cycle, but we promise smoother upgrades in the beta cycle.

Available resources:

• Distribution packages
• Elmo User Guide (also available as PDF or one large HTML file)
• API reference
• Source reference
• Release notes
• Source code (SVN)

Sesame 2.0-beta5 is a bugfix release that contains many large and small improvements in functionality and performance. Some changes worth mentioning explicitly are:

• the RDF model objects now implement Serializable
• RIO now has support for the TriG serialization format
• a bug in the HTTP communication preventing querying of inferred triples has been fixed
• various improvements in the behaviour and performance of the OpenRDF Workbench and the Console

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• distribution files

Sesame 1.2.7 and Rio 1.0.10 wrap up a number of bug fixes that have been uncovered over the past months. Also, thanks to Stephen Allen of BBN Technologies, the memory consumption required to add (large) RDF files to an HTTPRepository has been significantly reduced.

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• distribution files for Sesame 1.2.7
• distribution files for Rio 1.0.10

Aduna, the driving force behind Sesame, is looking for junior and senior Java software engineers. Want to work at the forefront of new semantic technologies? Have a look at the job descriptions on the Aduna website!

Elmo 1.0-alpha4 contains a large amount of API changes. This release now supports dynamic modules, behaviour factories, and behaviour rules.

Available resources:

• Elmo User Guide (also available as PDF or one large HTML file)
• distribution files

Main new feature of Sesame 2.0-beta4 is its RDF-based server configuration. All Sesame server now have a SYSTEM repository that stores configuration data, the old XML-based configuration mechanism is now deprecated. Further, this release contains some API refinements and a number of important bug fixes.

NOTE: when you update an existing server to this new release, you will have to redo the server configuration. Please read the chapter on server installation in the user manual for more info.

Available resources:

• Sesame User Guide (also available as one large HTML file)
• distribution files

Elmo 1.0-alpha3 is an update for the latest Sesame 2.0-beta3. Better logging and a new interface for the code-generator are the highlights in this release. This release also includes new annotations and some bug fixes. Thanks to everyone who gave feed-back, it is appreciated.

Available resources:

• Elmo User Guide (also available as PDF or one large HTML file)
• distribution files

Sesame 2.0-beta3 addresses a number of smaller and larger bugs and improvements, including several issues in the HTTP client-server communication, such as the clear operation and the handling of context.

For a full overview of fixes and improvements, see the Release Notes.

Sesame 2.0-beta3 can be found in our download section. The Javadoc API and user documentation are also available.

Elmo 1.0-alpha2 is an update for the latest Sesame 2.0-beta2. It also includes a few bug fixes and updates. Of note in this release is new StatementRealiserRepository wrapper that adds partial transaction isolation support. This release also includes a big departure in the provided concepts jar. To avoid property collision, all property names in the provided concepts are prefixed. This release, however, is still compatible with the previous concepts.jar.

Elmo User Guide can be viewed and downloaded as HTML or PDF.
Elmo can be downloaded from here.

Sesame 2.0-beta2 addresses a number of smaller and larger bugs and improvements, including a problem in the maven dependencies that broke development against beta1 for developers using maven, a few fixes related to the handling of context varargs, and a number of concurrency issues in the SailConnection.

For a full overview of fixes and improvements, visit the ChangeLog.

Sesame 2.0-beta2 can be found in our download section. The Javadoc API and user documentation are also available.

Elmo is a JavaBean pool implementation for the Sesame RDF repository. Specifically, Elmo is a subject-oriented RDF Bean pool that allows JavaBeans to be cast to different roles and provides a unique context specific view of the subject.

New features in this release include:

• Better documentation with lots of examples;
• Chained behaviour methods;
• Interceptors;
• Concept Generator from OWL ontology;
• Undo support;
• Data context support.

Elmo User Guide can be viewed and downloaded as HTML or PDF.
Elmo can be downloaded from here.

We are ecstatic to be able to announce the first beta release of Sesame 2.0! Sesame 2.0-beta1 marks the end of architectural changes to Sesame 2 and allows us to focus on adding features and fixing bugs, and you to finally see the Sesame 2 API as it is meant to be. You can find the latest version in the download section.

So what's new in Sesame 2.0-beta1 compared to previous alpha releases?

• Repository, Sail and Query APIs stable.
  We have moved from alpha-stage to beta-stage, meaning that the core APIs, the interfaces and method signatures, are now frozen and stable. This ensures that you as a developer will be able to upgrade to future releases without fear of breaking your application. See the JavaDoc API documentation and the user documentation for more details.
• Improved Context Support.
  We have improved the way Sesame handles contexts, allowing developers to freely access any combination of zero, one or more contexts in a single repository. Use of Java 5's vararg feature ensure a flexible, easy-to-use API.
• Sesame 2.0 Web Client.
  beta1 features the first release of a web client for Sesame servers. This web client can be deployed as a webapp and can be used to conviently query and modify a Sesame repository running on a (remote or local) Sesame 2.0 server.

For a more complete and detailed overview of changes, see the ChangeLog.

Of course, we would not call it beta if there were not some things missing as well. Our ToDo list includes:

• A MySQL storage backend is under development but not yet available in this rlease.
• Custom inferencing is not yet available.
• The SPARQL query engine does not yet support ordering and a few other language features.
• Fine-grained security on repositories is not yet available.

As remarked before, this beta release marks an important step in Sesame 2.0 development: instead of focusing our development efforts on the core structure and architecture we can now start paying attention to (aforementioned and other) features. You can expect regular beta releases as we add more of the 'good stuff'.

Of course, we owe a great debt to the many contributors and co-developers of Sesame 2. Thank you all for your patience, and we hope you are as pleased with the result as we are.

Deliriously yours,
     the OpenRDF development team

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Sesame 2.0-alpha4 release is the first alpha release the next major Elmo revision. This is a major step from previous versions. Elmo is a role based Java persistent bean pool. It provides a simple API to access ontology oriented data inside a Sesame repository. It separates interfaces and classes into unique reusable concepts and behaviours that are stitched together at runtime to provide context-specific views of the same subject.

Elmo 0.9-alpha can be downloaded here.

Also available just in time for the upcoming ISWC conference in Athens, Georgia, USA, is the next alpha release of Aperture, a content and metadata extraction framework based on Sesame (alpha3 in this case, although an update to the latest and greatest code is planned for the near future). The most notable feature in this release is a new IcalCrawler. It works with iCal files generated by many calendaring applications (Apple iCal, Korganizer, Lotus Notes ...). It uses an ical-rdf mapping developed by the W3C Rdf Calendaring group. Apart from that there are numerous small improvements and bugfixes. The tutorial has been expanded with more code examples and UML diagrams to facilitate learning for new users.

Aperture 2006.1-alpha-3 can be downloaded here.

We are very pleased to announce the fourth (and hopefully final) alpha-release of Sesame 2. Sesame 2.0-alpha4 is a release that fixes a large number of issues with the previous alpha releases. It features major improvements in the Repository and SAIL APIs and a completely redesigned query engine for SeRQL and SPARQL. Additionally this release finally has a HTTPSail which enables transparent client-server communication with Sesame repositories over HTTP.

Sesame 2.0-alpha4 can be found in the download section.

What is new in alpha4?

• Sesame is now available under a BSD-style license, previous releases are still available under LGPL.
• The Repository and Sail APIs have been revised to use JDBC-style connections.
• The SeRQL query engine has been been replaced with an all new generic query engine that is modelled after the relational algebra for RDBMS's.
• Sesame now has partial support for SPARQL. Ask and describe queries are not yet supported, as well as a number of the SPARQL built-in functions.
• Sesame now has an HTTPSail, which allows clients to transparently communicate with a server over HTTP.
• The semantics of SeRQL set operations have changed: the results of the operands are now combined based on the variable bindings they produce. This means that you have to take care that the operands use the same variables names (or use aliases).
• The REST-style HTTP protocol has been improved. The new protocol is NOT backwards compatible with older versions.
• The Sesame code has been completely modularized into logical units, which makes it easier to reuse parts of Sesame in other projects.
• The Ant-based build system has been replaced with a Maven-based build system.
• The source code has been moved from SourceForge's CVS server to Aduna's SVN server: https://src.aduna-software.org/svn/org.openrdf/

Known issues

• This release contains a HUGE amount of changes to the code and, as a result, is expected to contain a considerable number of bugs.
• The new query engine currently lacks a query optimizer. Because of this you may see inferior query evaluation performance compared to earlier releases.

See the ChangeLog for details on the changes and improvements.

Sesame 1.2.6 features a major improvement in the performance of the SeRQL string-comparison operator (LIKE) on MySQL and PostgreSQL backends. Improvement factors of 10 to 100 have been seen on several test queries.

Furthermore, a number of other issues were fixed, most notably a problem in the native store potentially causing data corruption.

More detailed information can be found in the release notes for Sesame 1.2.6 and the release notes for Rio 1.0.9. Of course, you can also head straight for the Download section.

Sesame 1.2.5 is primarily a bug-fix release that fixes a number of issues that have been uncovered in previous releases. Sesame 1.2.5 includes Rio 1.0.8, which has an updated Turtle parser that allows upper case language tags to be used.

Of special interest to maven users: thanks to Jason Johnston these releases are now also available from ibiblio's maven2 repository.

More detailed information can be found in the release notes for Sesame 1.2.5 and the release notes for Rio 1.0.8. Of course, you can also head straight for the Download section.

We will be hosting a tutorial/workshop session at the upcoming European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2006), on June 11.

The title of the tutorial is "Application Development with the Sesame Framework" and the session will be co-presented by Jeen Broekstra and Arjohn Kampman of Aduna, Atanas Kiryakov of OntoText, and Peter Mika of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

This tutorial aims at giving Semantic Web application developers and researchers an introduction into the many features and possiblities of the Sesame RDF framework, including advanced querying using SeRQL and SPARQL, using the Sesame Java APIs for programmatic manipulation of large RDF graphs, and doing scalable OWL reasoning using the OWLIM reasoner plugin.

The tutorial starts with a basic introduction into RDF and the Sesame framework. Next, an introduction into the use RDF query languages like SeRQL and SPARQL will be given, after which attendees can get hands-on experience by means of some simple excercises. We then shift focus on the use of the Sesame framework as part of application development, highlighting features of the API, and the way in which to communicate with the system either locally or remotely. We move on to introduce Elmo, a set of tools and Java Beans for cross-use ontologies such as FOAF, and in the final session we will discuss scalable OWL reasoning in Sesame using OWLIM.

The goal of the tutorial is to make researchers and developers aware of the advantages of using the Sesame framework for their own development work, and giving them the knowledge to get started quickly with using Sesame effectively.

We hope to see you all there!

Sesame 1.2.4 features an improved query optimizer, an improved indexing schema for the RDBMS Sail and fixes for several issues. Sesame 1.2.4 includes Rio 1.0.7, which features an updated Turtle parser & writer and fixes an issue with the RDF/XML parser. The output of the N3 writer has been updated to comply with the current specification; the N3 writer currently uses a Turtle writer internally, which generates N3-compatible documents.

More detailed information can be found in the release notes for Sesame 1.2.4 and the release notes for Rio 1.0.7. Of course, you can also head straight for the Download section.

Sesame 2.0-alpha-3 is a release that fixes a major bug in the SPARQL engine of Sesame 2 (which made it unusable in the previous release). Additionally, it contains a few performance improvements and even a new feature: the command console.

See the ChangeLog for details on the changes and improvements.

We are very pleased to be able to announce the second alpha release of Sesame 2. Sesame 2 is a complete revision of the Sesame framework. New in this release since the previous alpha release are:

• Java 5
  The Sesame APIs now extensively use Java 5 features such as typed collections and safe enumerations. Not only does this make code more robust, but it also actually make client code easier, shorter and clearer.
• Native Store
  The Sesame Native Store backend has been ported to Sesame 2. It now offers scalable storage and querying with reliable persistence and of course includes context support.
• Pull-based Query
  The Sesame query model has been redesigned to allow pull-based querying: through lazy iterators, the client can now actively control when individual query results are returned (instead of having to passively consume whatever the server sends it).

User, system and API documentation is available online. Sesame 2.0-alpha-2 can be downloaded from the download section.

Pike has announced the release of PySesame 0.24. PySesame is a Python wrapper for Sesame's HTTP API. It allows you to do easily access Sesame repositories from your Python script.

CognitiveWeb has announced a beta release of a Sesame SAIL implementation for Oracle 10g. From the release notes:

This is a beta release of an integration of the Oracle(R) 10g RDF support for the openrdf Sesame platform. This release includes a complete implementation of the RdfRepository SAIL interface but does not provide for query rewrites such that RDQL, etc. queries directed to a Sesame instance and answered by this SAIL will not be able to take full advantage of the RDF_MATCH table function. This release does not include an implementation of the RdfSchemaRepository SAIL interface, but it does include a SAIL parameter which may be used to request that Oracle(R) maintain the RDFS closure of the explicitly asserted triples.

The software is available here.

Sesame 1.2.3 and Rio 1.0.6 are both maintenance releases, fixing several issues. Most notably, the Turtle parser has been updated to the latest specs. Details can be found in the release notes for Sesame 1.2.3 and the release notes for Rio 1.0.6. Download pointers for both can be found here.

This release features significant improvements to the core of Elmo, increasing the scalability and efficiency of Elmo applications. Elmo is now also compatible with the Apache Commons BeanUtils package and the Spring Framework.

Please see the changelog for more details and on information about migrating from previous versions. Elmo 0.2 can downloaded from the usual location.

We are very pleased to be able to announce the first alpha release of Sesame 2. Sesame 2 is a complete revision of the Sesame framework, with a number of new main features:

• A revised Repository API that is much more targeted at embedded use of Sesame.
• Support for context, allowing you to keep track of individual RDF data units (like files, for instance).
• Proper transaction/rollback support.
• A REST-ful HTTP protocol that includes support for the SPARQL protocol and SPARQL Query Results XML Format Last Call Working Drafts from the W3C.
• Support for the SPARQL Query Language. The engine was developed by Ryan Levering in a separate open source project.

Documentation for Sesame 2 can be found online:

• User Documentation
  Includes a SeRQL 2 manual and code examples.
• System Design Documentation
  Includes a specification of the HTTP protocol.
• API JavaDoc

The current release is an Alpha release, which means that some parts of the revised API may still undergo changes until the final release, as a result of user feedback (and we strongly urge you to use this opportunity!). Furthermore, Sesame 2 is not yet feature-complete: for example, the Web interface and the RDBMS backend are not yet available.

Nevertheless, we trust that the new features will get you excited about what's coming in Sesame 2, and we invite you to take her out for a spin and report your experiences back to us.

Sesame 2.0-ALPHA-1 can be downloaded from the download section.

Chris Bizer has announced the release of D2RQ 0.4. A major new feature of this release is a wrapper which allows you to use D2RQ together with the Sesame Framework.

From the announcement:

"As Semantic Web technologies are getting mature, there is a growing need for RDF applications to access the content of non-RDF, legacy databases without having to replicate the whole database into RDF. D2RQ is a declarative language to describe mappings between relational database schemata and OWL/RDFS ontologies. The mappings allow RDF applications to access the content of huge, non-RDF databases using Semantic Web query languages like RDQL."

OWLIM is a high-performance semantic repository, packaged as a Storage and Inference Layer (SAIL) for the Sesame RDF database. This new release features major improvements to the upload and reasoning speed as well as extended OWL support. More info can be found at the OWLIM project page.

Sesame 1.2.2 fixes several issues that have been reported in the past two months. Further, the native Sail has been improved considerably in that it now supports multiple triple indexes. Work done by the Simile-project at MIT indicated that this can increase query performance dramatically.

Apart from a number of resolved issues, Rio 1.0.5 features a new "abbreviated RDF/XML writer" that uses several abbreviations to write out RDF/XML data. The resulting output is semantically equivalent to the output of the standard writer, but it is usually easier to read for humans. This writer has been contributed to Rio by Peter Mika as part of his work on Elmo.

Download pointers for both Sesame 1.2.2 and Rio 1.0.5 can be found here.

Ontotext has announced the release of OWLIM 2.0, an improved version of the in-memory OWL DLP reasoner for Sesame. OWLIM 2.0 has been updated to work with Sesame 1.2, and boasts a number of significant other improvements. Details on Ontotext's OWLIM project page.

Bibster, the Sesame-based P2P system for sharing of bibliographical citations, has won the System Innovation Award at the Cooperative Information Agents (CIA) Workshop. Naturally we are proud to have played a small part in this success and want to congratulate the Bibster team!

Sesame 1.2.1 is mainly a bugfix release that fixes a crucial bug in the native Sail and a few other issues. Of special interest is that Sesame now also supports comparisons between xsd:dateTime values, thanks to a contribution by Thomas Beer. A complete list of the changes is available in the issue tracker's Changelog.

The second release today is Elmo 0.1.1. Elmo is a toolkit for developing Semantic Web applications using Sesame. Elmo wraps Sesame, providing a dedicated API for a number of well known web ontologies including Dublin Core, RSS and FOAF. The dedicated API makes it easier to work with RDF data for the supported ontologies. Elmo also offers a set of tools related to the supported ontologies, including an RDF crawler, a FOAF smusher and a FOAF validator.

Elmo 0.1.1 is the first real release of Elmo, following up the 0.1 "test release". Elmo's API is extensible and is expected to cover a larger set of existing web ontologies as it matures. The main developer and driving force behind Elmo is Peter Mika. He welcomes any feedback, suggestions and/or contributions to Elmo through the OpenRDF.org forum. A User guide and API documentation is available from this site.

Download pointers for both Sesame 1.2.1 and Elmo 0.1.1 can be found here.

Jeen Broekstra, one of the main developers of Sesame, successfully defended his thesis on Storage, querying and inferencing for semantic web languages. He now holds the degree of doctor (dr.), but feel free to keep addressing him as "Jeen" ;-)

Jeen has been doing research in the context of the Semantic Web and, more specifically, Sesame. His thesis describes, among other things, OIL (which was later merged with DAML-ONT to DAML+OIL, which evolved to OWL), RDF query languages in general and SeRQL specically, inferencing and truth maintenance. The thesis is available as a zipped PDF file (9.8 MB) from Jeen's home page.

The final release of Sesame 1.2 is now available for download.

The most important new feature of this release is SeRQL revision 1.2. SeRQL 1.2 offers an impressive set of new operations and functional extensions, including:

• Nested queries
• Existential quantification
• Set algebraic operators (union, difference, intersection)
• namespace(), localName() functions
• isBNode(), isURI() functions
• Nested boolean constraints in optional path expressions

Other updates: It is now possible to register an object as a listener on a repository, which will then notify it of content changes. Also, the RDQL engine has been updated to work with the generic SAIL query model, significantly improving performance of the RDQL query engine.

Several other large and small issues and new features are also available in this release. For a full overview of changes see the Changelog.

Michiel Hobbelman has developed rsesame, a Ruby library for communication with Sesame repositories over HTTP. The current feature set includes evaluating SeRQL queries, adding RDF data and clearing a repository, with more to follow soon according to the author.

This brings the number of language bindings for Sesame to a respectable five: Java, Ruby, Delphi, PHP and Python.

The second release candidate of Sesame 1.2 is now available for download.

Release candidate 2 fixes three issues discovered in the first candidate release, one in the SeRQL query engine, one in the RMI subsystem and one in the Configure Sesame startup script. See the Changelog for details.

The first release candidate of Sesame 1.2 is now available for download.

The most important new feature of this release is SeRQL revision 1.2. SeRQL 1.2 offers an impressive set of new operations and functional extensions, including:

• Nested queries
• Existential quantification
• Set algebraic operators (union, difference, intersection)
• namespace(), localName() functions
• isBNode(), isURI() functions
• Nested boolean constraints in optional path expressions

Other updates: It is now possible to register an object as a listener on a repository, which will then notify it of content changes. Also, the RDQL engine has been updated to work with the generic SAIL query model, significantly improving performance of the RDQL query engine.

Several other large and small issues and new features are also available in this release. For a full overview of changes see the Changelog.

Rio 1.0.4 is a bugfix release that addresses three bugs found in earlier versions. For an overview of the changes see the ChangeLog.

Rio 1.0.4 can be found here.

As you possibly have noticed if you are a regular visitor of this site, these pages now contain some advertisements powered by Google AdSense and Amazon.com. OpenRDF.org draws an ever increasing number of visitors and a growing number of support requests on the forums. With this increased popularity comes an increased cost for handling the traffic and supporting users. We hope to cover the increased cost at least partially by running these advertisements, while giving visitors up-to-date info on relevant publications (via Amazon) at the same time.

Jeen Broekstra, one of the main developers of Sesame, has joined the W3C RDF Data Access Working Group (DAWG) as an 'invited expert'. The DAWG is concerned with the creation of a W3C Recommendation for (remote) accessing and querying of RDF repositories. Jeen will bring in his experience with the development of Sesame and, more specifically, SeRQL.

Sesame 1.1.3 fixes two bugs and includes one performance improvement for the memory Sail. Sesame 1.1.3 includes Rio 1.0.3, which fixes an issue with datatyped empty literals. Detailed descriptions of the changes can be found in the Sesame ChangeLog and Rio Changelog. Both packages can be downloaded from SourceForge: Sesame 1.1.3, Rio 1.0.3.

A new section for Plugins and Extensions, contributed by third party developers, has been added to our website. If you have developed some component or extension to the Sesame framework that you would like to see listed here, let us know.

Sesame 1.1 is the most thoroughly tested release in the history of Sesame. It has seen two release candidates which have been downloaded over 800 times in total. Lots of issues have been fixed as a result. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to this release!

Highlights of this release are:

• The Graph API, an extension of Sesame's access APIs, allows fine-grained manipulation of RDF models directly from Java.
• The Native Disk Store is a new storage backend that works directly on the file system, without need for a DBMS. It uses B-Tree indexing on binary files for fast, efficient and scalable storage.
• SeRQL revision 1.1 is a syntax revision that makes SeRQL queries even easier to read and write, and makes embedding in XML easier.
• Blank node handling has dramatically improved compared to 1.0.x.
• Lots of issues related to full Unicode support have been fixed.
• RDF Schema inferencing has been updated to be fully compliant with the W3C RDF Semantics Recommendation.
• Support for MS SQL Server as storage backend RDBMS. Thanks to Adam Skutt for providing fixes and suggestions for this.
• The Rio parser now supports the Turtle serialization format.
• Partial OWL reasoning support through Sesame's custom inferencer.
• Fully updated and extended User Documentation, including code examples for use of the Sesame APIs and a new Troubleshooting and FAQ chapter.

A complete list of changes can be found in the Changelog. Download pointers can be found in the download section.

At the International Semantic Web Conference 2004, or ISWC 2004 for short, the winner of the Semantic Web Challenge 2004 was announced. Flink, a social network browser based on FOAF and Sesame that has been developed by Peter Mika (Free University of Amsterdam), was awarded first place in a tough competition. Congratulations to Peter Mika for achieving this great result, and naturally we are proud that Sesame played a role in this success.

In other ISWC news, the Best Paper Award went to An Evaluation of Knowledge Base Systems for Large OWL Datasets by Y. Guo, Z. Pan, and J. Heflin of Lehigh University. The paper describes the application of a benchmark on semantic web knowledge base systems, and compares several systems, including Sesame.

Sesame sponsors the ISWC2004, the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference 2004. We are present in Hiroshima with talks, a demonstration and in the exhibition. All participants receive a Sesame flyer in their conference bag. Every flyer has a small doll attached to it. This so called worry doll stands for Sesame. It takes away your worries ;)

There is a legend amongst the Highland Indian villages of Guatemala: If you have a problem, then share it with a worry doll. Before going to bed, tell one worry to each doll, then place them beneath your pillow. Whilst you sleep, the dolls will take your worries away! If you happen to be visiting the ISWC2004, we suggest you get a hand on one of those worry dolls and get a good night's rest.

With these worry dolls we support fair trade with Guatemaltese indians.