TopBraid SuiteTopBraid ComposerTopBraid LiveTopBraid Ensemble

3.3.3 Release date: October 13, 2010
3.3.2 Release date: July 9, 2010
3.3.1 Release date: April 24, 2010
3.3.0 Release date: March 31, 2010
Prior Version Release Notes: 3.2.0
Changes: changes-3.3.3.txt changes-3.3.2.txt changes-3.3.1.txt changes-3.3.0.txt

Release Plan and Objectives
TopBraid Suite 3.3 is a minor release that incrementally extends the capabilities of TopBraid Suite (TBS), particularly its support for flexible, model-driven application creation and delivery through several options provided in the TBS platform for data services and user interface development (for example, TopBraid Ensemble).

The Release Objectives are as follows:

• TopBraid Platform – continue to improve stability, manageability, maintainability and performance for ontology development and the deployment of semantic model-driven applications.

• TopBraid Live – enhancement of server administration and management features.

• TopBraid Composer – improved application development and debugging tools.

• TopBraid Ensemble – addition of key new requested features and extension of some existing features that are common capabilities or 'building blocks' needed for a wide range of business applications.

recent previous Releases

TBS 3.3 release follows on releases 3.2.0, which was made available Nov. 2, 2009, and the maintenance release 3.2.1 (bug fixes only) that was made available Nov. 23, 2009.

key new features: products

TopBraid Ensemble (TBE)
 

• Enhancements to the Form component:

  • 'Edit Mode' application configuration will permit edit mode to be enabled for all the fields in a form in addition to editing of individual fields and viewing, which have been available in previous releases.

  • Ability to specify display classes for presenting the form contents suited to the context of the information that is being presented.

• Application Event Dashboard:  an overview of the events that each application component listens for and responds to.

• Tabless Components: optional enhancement that may be selectively used in the presentation (look and feel) of TBE application components.

• Web Page Viewer: ability to display HTML documents, including those produced by SPARQLMotion scripts within a TBE application.

• Documentation of a worked example of using the Flex SDK (as a guide for developers).

• Application Context Path: capability to preserve the state of a TBE application and present it to other users for use through a URL link.

• Several new components and events, including the Basket, which is similar to the Basket within TopBraid Composer.

TopBraid Live (TBL)
 

• Improved multiuser change propagation and management.

• Dictionary life-cycle management enhancements, including a Dictionary Management Page and support for label hierarchies, uniqueness of labels and convenient use of SKOS preferred labels when needed.

• Improved Base URI Management for conflict resolution:

  • Maintenance of only one ontology per base URI rule.

  • Provision of a base URI Management page.

  • Help with base URI conflicts.

  • Help with missing imports.

TopBraid Composer (TBC)
 

• Visual SPARQLMotion debugger that can be used to:

  • Interrupt and display the engine's execution plan.

  • Display intermediate variable bindings.

  • Display the arguments of the current module.

  • Run test queries to explore the intermediate state.

  • Display details about the input graph.

• Improved OWL 2 support, including a faster OWL Manchester Syntax parser and renderer.

• Improved editing support for SKOS vocabularies.

  • Opening SKOS files will automatically open the Associations view with skos:broader.

  • Added Create root button to Associations view.

  • Option to automatically import SKOS from New file wizard.

• New TopBraid Composer editions (TBC clear, TBC-ME clear) with open source components unbundled (other than the core platform components Eclipse and Jena); customers will be able to add back open source capabilities on a selective basis through the software update function.

• uiSPIN: new model-driven framework to describe user interfaces by defining HTML/SVG rendering in the model; using uiSPIN makes data self documenting.  (In this release, uiSPIN is provided in TBC only as a beta capability.)

key new features: TopBraid platform

• Significant API improvements (refactorings).

• Various SPARQLMotion improvements that enhance flexibility and options for its use within applications:

  • Ability to do direct updates from SPARQLMotion scripts to better handle arbitrary named graphs.

  • Enhanced management of SPARQLMotion sessions.

  • Arguments of SPARQLMotion modules can now be SPARQL expressions.

  • Arguments of SPARQLMotion modules can now be SPARQL SELECT queries or SPIN templates.

• SPIN improvements including several new functions--for example, a function for building unique URIs, and extended syntax for supporting capabilities such as AVG, MIN and MAX aggregations.

• Spell checking engine incorporated.

• Customizable, formatted ontology document generation (HTML documents).

• Cache-all option for databases - allows all data to be cached in memory to enable faster queries.

• For legal reasons, TopBraid no longer bundles MySQL and jTDS drivers. Please see the following Help file to download and install these database drivers:
    Help > Import and Export > Import external information > Importing Relational Databases with D2RQ