What's new in TopBraid Suite 3.2

3.2 is a minor release of TopBraid Suite, but it adds more than just background improvements such as faster performance and improvements to both memory management and 64-bit support. Each of TopBraid Suite's components includes new features that will ease the development of Semantic Web applications and offer a wider range of features to include in those applications. The following lists some highlights:

TopBraid Composer

TopBraid Composer makes it easy to develop and integrate Semantic Web data models, SPARQL Inferencing Notation (SPIN) inferencing rules, and SPARQLMotion data processing pipelines into a standards-compliant application. New TopBraid Composer features in release 3.2 include:

• OWL 2 support, with features such as property chain axioms, user-defined datatypes, and OWL 2 class axioms. Read more at VP of Product Development Holger Knublach's blog posting OWL 2 Support in TopBraid Composer.
  

• New SPIN features such as spin:fix to implement suggestions for constraint violation fixes, easier control over rule execution, and the ability to distribute rules across devices. An important new improvement is support for user-defined magic properties in SPIN, allowing users to define rules with backward chaining. You can define a magic property, or property function, using SPARQL and then use it as the predicate in another SPARQL expression to compute new values based on the data being queried. Holger's Magic Properties with SPIN blog posting has some good examples.
  

• A new SPARQL debugger that lets you set break points, display intermediate variable bindings, collect statistics, and see the internal algebra of SPARQL queries as they run. Holger's recent blog posting on this topic walks the reader through the underlying logic, the use of the debugger view, and the use of profiling.
  

• More options for the display of long lists in the Properties and Classes view, making it easier to find what you're looking for quickly.
  

• Easier packaging of a project developed with TopBraid Composer for deployment to a server running TopBraid Live for use by multiple users.
  

• Support for the latest major release of the Eclipse platform, release 3.5.
  

TopBraid Ensemble

With TopBraid Ensemble, you can create web-based user interfaces for the applications you develop using Composer. End users, without using Composer, can interact with your application's data using a wide choice of graphical interface components that you customize for them. New Ensemble features in 3.2 include:

• Support for pop-up windows, so that you can build wizards that lead your application's users through a series of steps.
  

• Support for multi-page applications, letting you spread the interface for more complex applications across a series of pages, as with a tabbed interface.
  

• A new, customizable button component that lets your application's users trigger events with a mouse click.
  

• A new SPARQL Relay component, which can listen for events and trigger SPARQLMotion scripts in the background of your application.
  

TopBraid Live

TopBraid Live lets you deploy your application for use by hundreds of users with the screens that you designed with Ensemble, with screens that were custom-built using Adobe Flex, or with an automated web services interface. New features in 3.2 include:

• User and group management, including optional integration with LDAP roles.
  

• Access Control Lists for projects, folders and graphs.
  

• The ability to host an application as a SPARQL end point.
  

• Significant performance improvements when used with Oracle.
  

For a complete list of new features in TopBraid Ensemble release 3.2, see the 3.2 Release Notes.