What's New in Virtuoso 4.5?

• WebDAV - Virtuoso 4.5 introduces an entirely new implementation of its WebDAV repository including, dynamic collections, file meta data support, dynamic views of view of files organized by meta data and meta data values.
  • SmartDAV Folders - A SmartDAV folder is a dynamic collection created in DAV whose contents are determined at run time by automatically categorizing uploaded files or resources based on a DAV Extension type (DET). Virtuoso DET support provides a mechanism to create a new dynamic collection, based on its own methods for reading or writing data.
  • Metadata Extraction - Automatic retrieval of metadata, so it is now possible to retrieve basic metadata from resources (Support for metadata includes RSS < 1.0, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom; Microsoft Office Document, vCard)
  • Security Enhancements - Additional ACLs and added security for SmartDAV Folder collections and filter searches
  • Interoperability - Virtuosos WebDAV repository has undergone interoperability testing on a number of 3rd party WebDAV Clients (Dreamweaver, InfoPath, Frontpage, and Microsoft Office).
  • API Updates - Additional API calls to allow fast integration and development.

Visit Virtuoso 4.5 online tutorials

• SQL Cost Model - Virtuoso 4.5 includes substantial improvement to the SQL cost model, yielding dramatically better SQL optimization choices in certain cases.
• SQL Inverse Function - Virtuoso introduces an SQL extension for creating functions that are inverses of each other which include mapping data and foreign Key Relations: Example dollar_to_euro and euro_to_dollar would be examples of inverse functions.
• Information Schema Views - The INFORMATION_SCHEMA Views are system views that provide some information about the system meta-data making it easier to query Virtuoso system tables. Virtuoso 4.5 includes a number information schema vies based on the ISO SQL92 standard to allow users more flexibility when developing SQL queries across database engines and guarantee consistent results when using these views instead of directly querying system tables which may change from release to release.
• SQL Compiler Optimizations
  • Improved support for indirect grants in SYS_ROLE_GRANTS
  • Improved handling the sub expression matches in regular expressions
  • Improved handling of negations in the where clause of select Union statements

Visit Virtuoso 4.5 online tutorials

• XML Parser - Optimization and better error reporting in XML Parser.
• XQuery Functions Updates - Support for XQuery Function fn:collection and check our latest tutorial

Visit Virtuoso 4.5 online tutorials

• BPEL4WS -  BPEL offers the promise of reducing the cost and complexity associated with process integration of proprietary EAI and BPM solutions, which are expensive to develop, maintain, and extend across diverse, heterogeneous environments. Virtuoso 4.0 now supports BPEL for Web Services (BPEL4WS) and provides the deployment and execution of business processes defined in BPEL 1.1 through the OpenLink BPEL Process Manager.   Virtuosos BPEL implementation offers a seamless addition to Virtuoso's database federation, XML and web services features.  It builds on the strength of having a local high performance relational data store for process persistency and does not require any third party application server infrastructure or databases.  
• WS Interop - WS-RM and WS-Security and BPEL4WS have gone through an extensive interoperability by testing other vendor's implementations and through active participation of WS-Interop forums.

Visit Virtuoso 4.5 online tutorials, BPEL and Web Services Interop Sites

• HTTP Server Settings
  • New function for controlling the lifetime of http threads, allowing on-going processing from clients provided through the  HTTP Server HTTP_IGNORE_DISCONNECT that when set will cause it not to rollback the transaction on a disconnect.

Visit Virtuoso 4.5 online tutorials

• Document Search - Advanced search functionality has been added to Virtuoso documentation and provides RSS gems (including Open Search API extensions) as well as options for HTML or XML formatted results using Free Text, XPath, and XQuery and search results including excerpts summaries of document content.

Visit Virtuoso 4.5 online documentation server

• OpenLink Explorer - Virtuoso 4.5 introduces a new plug-in for Visual Studio .NET allows development of Virtuoso-specific features within the familiar Visual Studio environment providing users with ease of use and accelerated development cycles. 
  • Virtuoso tables and connections can easily be dragged and dropped into MS Studio Projects, which  makes Virtuoso an convenient data source for Web or GUI target Microsoft .Net development.
  • Through OpenLink Explorer any heterogeneous data sources linked to Virtuoso via its Virtual Database capability are presented as if they were stored on a local Microsoft SQL Server.
• Mac OS X Client Connectivity Kit - Improved bundling and deployment for ODBC, JDBC, and NET providers
• Virtuoso ODBC 4.0 Driver - Improved error messages and conformance with the ODBC error messages specifications.

Screenshot of Virtuoso 4.5 Conductor Image -
Click to enlarge

Virtuoso Conductor - The Virtuoso Conductor is a new Virtuoso VSPX web-based administration and configuration tool, which provides access to a number of database and server interfaces, being designed to simplify, automate, and reduce the complexity of support and administration of OpenLink's Virtuoso Universal Server. This user-friendly interface allows administrators to manage a number of Virtuoso servers’ features including handling of Database Administration, SQL and XML storage, Enterprise Data including disparate databases & data sources, Web Service Composition, Business Process Integration, and Business Collaboration. Features include:

Screenshot of Virtuoso ISQL Image -
Click to enlarge

Screenshot of WebDAV Image -
Click to enlarge

• Schema Objects Editor: Built-in Schema Object Viewer (Tables, Views, and Stored Procedures) Create new objects, enabling/disabling of foreign keys, constraints, and export Schema DDL.
• ISQL Query Editor : Execute and develop SQL queries. ISQL features provide syntax highlighting, execution plans and a SQL builder which provides a Wizard to build statements on the fly from database schemas. Using this interface you can edit query results and save them to a local file or Virtuoso WebDAV repository.

• XQuery Editor - XQuery Editor provides a graphical user interface for writing, testing and viewing XQuery queries. Develop and store XQuery queries for reuse, saving time and cost as well as storied results for reporting and transformation.

• WebDAV and HTTP Administration - WebDAV Object Filtering and Searching: Filter database objects by name or text-search stored procedures and triggers for terms contained in their definition.

Screenshot of Linking External DataSources Image
Click to enlarge

Screenshot of SQL-XML Image
Click to enlarge

Virtual Database Management

• External Datasources user interface provides real-time information integration across disparate data sources and create a virtual database to make it simple for business users to access, integration and transform information in from multiple datasources.

SQLX and SQL-XML Transformation

• SQL-XML - Execute and define an XML template based on a SQL, SQL-XML or XPath Query or apply a XQuery Mapping Schema. Through this interface you can specify root elements that contain the resulting XML tree, a file name and location of the XML Template. Options include saving the query to WebDAV or provide an XSLT stylesheet. Behind the scenes when you provide a stylesheet, it is used as the default transformation for the XML and the template saved is executed directly from WebDAV.