[redland-dev] ANNOUNCEMENT: Rasqal RDF Query Library 0.9.8

[Dave Beckett]

		   Rasqal RDF Query Library 0.9.8
		      http://librdf.org/rasqal/

Rasqal is a free software / Open Source C library that handles
Resource Description Framework (RDF) query syntaxes, query
construction and execution returning results as bindings, boolean or
RDF graphs.  It supports the RDQL and SPARQL query languages.  Rasqal
was designed to work closely with the Redland[1] RDF library and the
Raptor[2] RDF parsing and serializing library but is entirely
separate from both.

Rasqal is beta quality: working but the API is being modified and
extended.  It is a portable library and has been tested on multiple
POSIX systems and a variety architectures (x86, IA64, powerpc, alpha,
sparc) along with win32 and other systems.  It has no known memory
leaks in normal use and is suitable for embedding in long running
applications.

The changes in this version are
  * Updated to SPARQL Query Language for RDF W3C Working Draft of
    17 February 2005
  * Added casting to the engine and in SPARQL
  * Restructured query engine to be based on a tree of graph patterns
  * Constraints now work per-graph pattern
  * Added a Data Graph API
  * Query engine uses and binds graph names in queries (SPARQL LOAD,
    FROM and GRAPH)
  * Expanded the Graph Pattern API

Detailed changes are given in the 0.9.8 release notes at
  http://librdf.org/rasqal/RELEASE.html#rel0_9_8

Rasqal 0.9.8 requires Raptor 1.4.4[2] or newer to provide RDF parsing
and other support and also can use either Raptor or Redland 1.0.0[1]
to provide a source of triples.  An optional requirement is a POSIX
regular expression library such as PCRE or one built into the C library.

Rasqal 0.9.8 was tested as working out-of-the-box (configure; make;
make check) against an installed Raptor 1.4.5 with the following
systems:

    sparc-sun-solaris2.8        - Sun Solaris 9 (SunOS 5.8) on sparc
    alphaev67-unknown-linux-gnu - Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 on Alpha
    i386-pc-solaris2.9          - Sun Solaris 9 (SunOS 5.9) on x86
    sparc-sun-solaris2.9        - Sun Solaris 9 (SunOS 5.9) on sparc
    i386-unknown-freebsd5.4     - FreeBSD 5.4 on x86
    i686-pc-linux-gnu           - Debian GNU/Linux unstable on x86
    i686-pc-linux-gnu           - Redhat GNU/Linux Fedora Core 3 on x86
    powerpc-apple-darwin7.8.0   - Apple OSX 10.3.8 on powerpc

(This is less than usual as SourceForge's compile farm is partially
unavailable)

The release consists of the full sources, RPM binaries and source RPM
packages for RedHat GNU/Linux Fedora Core 3.
These are also available from the Redland SourceForge mirror site at
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/librdf/
Debian packages are made available after release and in due course
will be in the standard Debian unstable archive.

The main web site lets you browse and check out the latest version of
the sources in CVS.

Dave

[1] Redland RDF library,
http://librdf.org/

[2] Raptor RDF parser and serializer library,
http://librdf.org/raptor/