Hello everyone,

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of the second stable release in the Semantic MediaWiki 2.x series.

Semantic MediaWiki 2.1 is a minor release that adds several new features, many enhancements, addresses numerous issues and adds support for additional platforms. It does not contain any breaking changes.

## Highlights ##

### Support for semantic queries in Special:Search ###

This release adds support for semantic queries run directly from MediaWiki's standard search. You can enable this feature by setting $wgSearchType to "SMWSearch". The related configuration parameter $smwgFallbackSearchType allows specifying which search engine to fall back to in case "SMWSearch" returns no results. (#450, #496, #505)

### SPARQLStore improvements ###

The SPARQLStore now supports concept queries (#696) and regex like queries ([[Url::~http://*query=*]] OR [[Url::~*ccc*]]) for Page and URL values (#679).

Notable performance improvements and many other fixes (can be found in the bug fix list) have been made to broaden the SPARQLStore support.

### Enhanced platform support ###

* SMW has partially supported PostgreSQL for a long time. This new release brings SMW's PostgreSQL support to the same level as MySQL and SQLite, making it the third fully supported relational database. * HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine) 3.3 or above is now supported along with all previously supported PHP versions. * Although earlier versions of SMW probably work with MediaWiki 1.24, this new release officially supports it.

You can find a full overview in our compatibility matrix [0]. This matrix now also includes planned compatibility for future releases, to the extend this is known.

## Other new features ##

* Concepts can now be nested (bug 15316) * Modernized Special:SearchByProperty interface * Added subobject parameter to the BrowseBySubject API module and imporved resolving of circular redirects * Added --page as export option to the dumpRDF.php maintenance script * Made ouput decoding for uri's human readable (bug 35452) * Added --runtime option to rebuildData.php. It allows you to see how much time was spend and how much memory was used. * Added $smwgEnabledEditPageHelp option that enables showing a contextual help text on the edit page * Enabled semicolon escaping for record-type values (;) (bug T17732) * Added Special:Log support for events enabled in smwgLogEventTypes

## Bug fixes ##

* Fixed the SPAPRQLStore to return a FalseCondition instead of an exception for not supported data types (e.g Geo) * Fixed the SPAPRQLStore query selection for subobjects used with a namespace condition * Removes invalid category value links to SearchByProperty on Special:Browse (bug 33449) * Fixed parameter encoding in Special:SearchByProperty for hyphens and spaces (bug 16150) * Enhanced concept pages to provide time and date of the last update * Fixed the SPARQLStore query result display for moved pages (a.k.a. "gost" pages) * Fixed movability for predefined property pages * Fixed data display inconsistency for pre-existing redirects * Fixed circular UpdateJob caused by redirects * Fixed exception in dumpRDF.php caused by resolving a subobject for a redirect * Fixed cache id mismatch for redirects in SQLStore * Fixed exception for when a null is returned by ExportController::getSemanticData * Enhanced SPARQLStore XML result parser to support Virtuoso singelton response * Fixed subobject disjunctive/conjunctive subquery handling * Fixed named subobject encoding in the Exporter to support accented characters * Fixed browse link generation for wikipages in Special:Browse * Fixed the hard-coded upper bound for the offset option of an inline query by replacing it with configuration parameter $smwgQUpperbound * Fixed postgres temporary table generation issue (bug 34855, #455, #462) * Fixed QueryProcessor to allow query conditions to contain = (bug 32955) * Removes service info links from the Factbox * Fixed broken field detection in record-type caused by html encoded strings (bug T23926) * Fixed #REDIRECT detection in MW 1.24+ * Fixed regex search (~/!) for page-type property values (bug T36665, T49073, T33151, T35854) * Fixed regex search support for uri-type property values * Fixed invalid :smw-redi marker when #REDIRECT is removed manually * Fixed probable race condition for SQLStore(postgres) when creating temporary tables * Fixed http header in SPARQLStore to be Sesame complaint

The full list can also be viewed at [2]. The installation procedure [3] has not changed since 1.9.0. To upgrade, you will need to get the new version of SMW, run MediaWikis update.php, and run SMWs refresh data script [4].

- The SMW development team

[0] https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/master/docs/COMP... [2] https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMW_2.1 [3] https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation [4] https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation#Upgrading