[redland-dev] ANNOUNCEMENT: Rasqal RDF Query Library 0.9.5

[Dave Beckett]

		   Rasqal RDF Query Library 0.9.5
		      http://librdf.org/rasqal/

Rasqal is a free software / Open Source C library that handles
Resource Description Framework (RDF) query syntaxes, query
construction and query execution returning result bindings.  The
supported query languages are RDQL and SPARQL.  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.

This is a major release of Rasqal with a large change to the
internals of the query engine and query model.

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 main changes this release are:

 * Query engine refactored to execute over graph patterns
 * Added support for SPARQL optionals
 * Added formatting of query results according to the
   SPARQL Variable Binding Results XML Format, W3C Working Draft, 2004-12-21
 * Updated SPARQL to handle syntax changes

Detailed changes are given in the 0.9.5 release notes at
  http://librdf.org/rasqal/RELEASE.html#rel0_9_5

Rasqal 0.9.5 requires Raptor 1.4.4[2] or newer to provide RDF parsing
and other support and also can use either Raptor or Redland 0.9.19[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 0.9.5 was tested as working out-of-the-box (configure; make;
make check) against an installed Raptor 1.4.4 with the following
systems:
    alphaev67-unknown-linux-gnu - Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 on Alpha
    i386-pc-solaris2.9          - Sun Solaris 9 (SunOS 5.9) on x86
    i386-unknown-freebsd4.10    - FreeBSD 4.10 on x86
    i386-unknown-netbsdelf1.6.1 - NetBSD 1.6.1 on x86
    i386-unknown-openbsd3.4     - OpenBSD 3.4 on x86
    i686-pc-linux-gnu           - Debian GNU/Linux unstable on x86
    powerpc-apple-darwin5.5     - Apple OSX 10.2.5 on powerpc
    sparc-sun-solaris2.8        - Sun Solaris 8 (SunOS 5.8) on sparc
    sparc-sun-solaris2.9        - Sun Solaris 9 (SunOS 5.9) on sparc
    x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu    - Redhat GNU/Linux Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

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/
(although since 2005-01-14 the upload facility is not working so
there are will be no packages until that is fixed.)

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.

I post updates about Rasqal, Redland and Raptor to the redland-dev list
which is one of the lists you can join from the list page at
  http://librdf.org/lists/

Dave

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

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