TopBraid SuiteTopBraid ComposerTopBraid LiveTopBraid Ensemble

Release date: May 1, 2009
Changes: changes-3.0.0.txt
Prior Version: 2.6.2

This is the first integrated release of the whole TopBraid Suite: TopBraid Composer, TopBraid Live and TopBraid Ensemble.

Licensing: In order to use any of the 3.x versions beyond the evaluation period of 30 days, you must have a valid license. If you are an existing customer with a 2.x license, your license will be accepted (for free) if your TSM support contract reaches into 2009. For example, if you have bought TBC 2.x in 2008 with 1 year of support then you won't need a new license. If your TSM has lapsed for less than 2 months, you can purchase a new TSM contract, otherwise you can purchase an upgrade. For more information and to process your request, e-mail us at sales@topquadrant.com.

The evaluation period for all users has been reset with 3.0 beta 2. This means that you can download beta 2 and evaluate it for 30 days even if you have previously evaluated beta 1 or 2.6.x release.

This version includes tons of improvements over the 2.x releases. Beside major bug fixes and usability improvements, a key new capability of this release is that a personal edition of the newly upgraded TopBraid Ensemble 3.0 is now bundled with the download of TopBraid Composer Maestro Edition. The TopBraid team has made significant improvements to the architecture of Ensemble, so that it is now a completely model-driven rich client application assembly framework. Ensemble can be launched locally through a web browser while TBC ME is running; this will provide support to developers for rapid development, testing and evolution of semantic applications.

Other changes to Composer since 2.6 include the following:

• Support for the SPARQL Inferencing Notation (SPIN)
  • Incremental SPARQL-based inferencing using SPIN
  • Constraint checking at edit time using SPIN
  • SPIN also provides a mechanism for defining new SPARQL functions, either using other SPARQL queries or embedded JavaScript code
  • Support for generalizing SPARQL queries into templates and libraries
• TopBraid Composer now has a button that can be used to switch the whole user interface between displaying resource identifiers (qnames) and human-readable labels (rdfs:label and sub-properties thereof).
• Forms now contain incoming reference (inverse) widgets
• Significant improvements to SPARQLMotion/Web services (see also: migration guide)
• Support for sharing SPARQL queries on SPARQLpedia
• Composer's Graph component can now be used to build SPARQL queries, using a visual query-by-example paradigm.
• Results of SPARQL query results can be visualized in the graph
• SPARQLMotion scripts can now be triggered by changes to a model, implementing event-condition-action rules.
• Support for highly scalable Jena TDB databases
• Support for named graphs in AllegroGraph and Sesame 2
• Several new help facilities
• Numerous bug fixes and performance improvements

Important: Make sure you do not overwrite your existing workspace, or work on a copy of your old workspace. Due to the changes in the SPARQL representation of SPIN you may not be able to use files edited with 3.0 in older versions of TBC.