Hello everyone,

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of the first stable release in the Semantic MediaWiki 2.0.x series.

Semantic MediaWiki 2.0 is a big release that adds several new features, many enhancements, and addresses numerous issues.

## Compatibility changes ##

Semantic MediaWiki 2.0 is compatible with MediaWiki 1.19 up to MediaWiki 1.23, and possibly later versions. Support for both MediaWiki 1.23 and MediaWiki 1.24 was improved compared to SMW 1.9. PHP compatibility remains the same as in SMW 1.9: all versions from PHP 5.3.2 to PHP 5.6.x. For a full overview, see our compatibility matrix [0].

## Quality and stability improvements ##

A great deal of effort has been put into ensuring both existing and new features work well. Not just at present, but also in future releases. And not just with MySQL and one version of MediaWiki, but on all platforms we support. This dedication to quality has resulted in many bugs being discovered and fixed, and makes future regressions much less likely.

Continuous integration is now an integral part of the development process behind SMW. As of the 2.0 release, SMW has over 2300 automated tests, which cover two thirds of the codebase. These tests are run automatically for every change made to the code, on machines with different databases, different versions of PHP, different SPARQL stores and different versions of MediaWiki.

## Semantic Versioning ##

As of the 2.0 release, Semantic MediaWiki adheres to the Semantic Versioning standard [1]. This makes our version numbers more meaningful and makes it easier for administrators to determine if a new release is relevant to them.

## Improved SPARQLStore support ##

Semantic MediaWiki 1.6 introduced support for data synchronization with RDF back-ends. SMW 2.0 makes this functionality a first class citizen through many enhancements and stability improvements.

* New and full support for Jena Fuseki 1.0 * Enhanced and full support for Virtuoso 6.1 * Enhanced support for 4store 1.1

## Improved subobject support ##

Support for subobjects has been added to the RDF export. This new capability is used by the RDF store functionality to also synchronize subobjects. (#344)

Subobjects now support sorting via the `@sortkey` annotation that stores an individual sortkey per subobject. (#225)

## Notable bug fixes ##

* #279 Fixed undefined index in `DataTypeRegistry::getDefaultDataItemTypeId` * #282 Output a message instead of an exception in `Special:WantedProperties` for unknown predefined properties * #308 Fixed caching issue in `DataRebuilder` for duplicate title objects * #312 Fixed fatal error in `CategoryResultPrinter` for when a mainlabel is hidden * #322 Fixed file names containing spaces or non-ASCII characters for downloadable result formats (csv, excel) * #379 Modernized `dumpRDF.php` while deprecating the use of `SMW_dumpRDF.php` (bug 35679) * #425 Deprecated `SMW_setup.php` in favour of `setupStore.php` * #444 Fixed language namespace alias issue * #420 Extended `ContentParser` to mitigate issues caused by the 62856 bug in MW 1.24+ * #405 Added a compatibility fix to mitigate issues caused by the `RefreshLinksJob` in MW 1.23+

SPARQLStore:

* #291 Fixed call to undefined method in `SPARQLStore` * #338 Fixed exception in `ResultParser` for an invalid datatype (bug 62218) * #385 Fixed '#' encoding for subobjects in `SMWExporter::findDataItemForExpElement` to enable `SPARQLStore` result display * #387 Fixed `SPARQLStore` namespace query support (e.g `[[:+]]` ) * #415 Fixed `SPARQLStore` usage for `rebuildConceptCache.php` and `rebuildPropertyStatistics.php` * #460 Fixed `SPARQLStore` subobject sub query and pre-defined property query support

This 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... [1] http://semver.org/ [2] https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMW_2.0 [3] https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation [4] https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation#Upgrading