Concepts for EPiServer 1.1.1 – EPiServer CMS 6 R2 compatibility
Concepts for EPiServer v1.1.1 is now available bringing compatibility with EPiServer CMS 6 R2. Also included are minor fixes for editors using Webkit or Internet Explorer browsers. Using Concepts for EPiServer with EPiServer CMS 6 R2 also requires that Web3 Plattform is upgraded to version 2.0.
Visit the Downloads page to download Concepts for EPiServer 1.1.1 and Web3 Platform.
Web3 1.4 Release
We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.4 of Web3. This release is a bug-fix update and is recommended for all users of Web3. Links to the installation packages can be found on the NetworkedPlanet download page.
Upgrade Instructions
To upgrade from Web3 1.3, unzip the installation package and run the installer application in Web3/setup.exe. During installation you will be prompted for database and service configuration information as you were during the initial installation. After installing Web3, you should also upgrade the Web3Admin package on any client machines that use the Powershell administration snap-in. Full installation and upgrade information can be found in the installation package.
To upgrade from previous versions of Web3, follow the upgrade instructions above and then open the Web3 site in your browser. Each topic map on the Web3 site must be resynchronized with its schema (if it has one). To do this, click on the topic map name in the topic map list and then on the topic map page click on the Jobs button. On the topic map jobs page, click on the Synchronize Schema button to start the synchronization process. It is also possible to perform this synchronization operation using the Web3 Admin powershell snap-in. Further details on the upgrade process can be found in the README file contained in the installation ZIP package.
Change Log
- FEATURE: Topic and associations retrieved as XTM now include an automatically generated item identifier based on the Web3 internal GUID identifier for the item.
- FEATURE: Added support for the "no" language code for Norwegian in addition to the existing "nb" (for Bokmal) and "nn" (for Nynorsk)
- FEATURE: The New-Schema cmdlet has been updated to provide better feedback when the command files due to missing files or server errors.
- BUGFIX: Fixed an editor issue where topic types that were derived from abstract types could not be selected as the type for a topic instance.
- BUGFIX: The Get-Schema cmdlet has been renamed to Export-Schema for consistency. This cmdlet has also been fixed to ensure that only the XML format is retrieved from the server.
- BUGFIX: Fixed a browser caching issue that prevented the browser from displaying the updated topic types after synchronizing schemas.
- BUGFIX: Fixed a typo with the documentation of the New-Schema cmdlet which showed the command in the command summary as "Add-Schema".
- BUGFIX: Fixed bug in client-side javascript library that prevented editing of date/time fields.
- BUGFIX: Fixed alt-text of the Edit button on the schema display page.
- BUGFIX: Changed the Javascript library function for testing if an item is in an array to avoid a name clash with SharePoint's Javascript libraries.
- BUGFIX: Fixed an issue with parsing schema files that include white-space around type subject identifiers.
- BUGFIX: Fixed problem with SPARQL FILTER clauses not being consistently applied in certain queries.
- BUGFIX: Fixed bug in client side javascript utility for comparing objects.
We would like to thank those developers and users who took the time to report issues to us for fixing in this release.
Web3 1.3 Javascript Patch
This notice applies to all editions of Web3 version 1.3.20317
A couple of Javascript issues with the new Topic Map Editor in Web3 have been brought to our attention.
- The Types list in the topic editor does not list topic types which are subtypes of an abstract type. This problem prevents the user from adding a subtype of an abstract type to the list of topic types and it also means that when editing a topic which is an instance of a type that inherits from an abstract type, the editing process actually deletes the topic type.
- The Date/Time field validation doesn't work correctly with the JSON date/time values generated by the Web3 server. This problem shows up when the user enters a valid date/time string into a date/time field and saves the value. The value is correctly stored on Web3, but when the user reloads the topic into the topic editor the field shows the date/time as "NaN-NaN-NaN NaN:NaN:NaN" and displays a validation error.
These issues are addressed in a JS file patch which can be downloaded from here. To install the patch, unzip the file to a temporary directory and then copy the two Javascript files inside it to the directory Server\js under your Web3 installation directory (typically c:\Program Files\NetworkedPlanet\Web3) - these files will replace the two existing Javascript files that contained the errors described above.
Please note: after the update, your browser may still use a locally cached version of these scripts. To ensure that you are using the updated version of the scripts it may be necessary to clear your browser cache.
If you have any problems with this update or other issues with Web3 please do not hesitate to contact us.
Concepts for SharePoint 1.1 now available
Version 1.1 of Concepts for SharePoint is now available. This package addresses a small number of bugs and enhancements. The full change list and upgrade instructions can be found below.
The Concepts for SharePoint package can be downloaded from the NetworkedPlanet download page.
Upgrading from 1.0
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To upgrade from 1.0, unzip the download package and run the STSADM -upgradesolution command. The exact command-line you use will depend on how you want to schedule the upgrade, but will be similar to:
stsadm -o upgradesolution -name ConceptsForSharePoint.wsp -filename ConceptsForSharePoint.wsp -allowgacdeployment -local
Restart IIS and the SharePoint 2010 Timer Service
If running CfS on a separate server to that of the Web3 Platform, you will also need to upgrade the additional web3.wsp file contained in the upgrade package and restart the services.
Change Log
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BUGFIX: Query amended to ensure sure that deleted associations whose roles still exist do not get returned in the results of the One Hop Web Part.
FEATURE: New Topic List Web Part renders gridview of topics of type, with custom propertie to show occurrences and/or identifiers in the results set.
DOCS: Amended documentation error that specified the wrong format for message
queues on remote machines.
LOGGING: Additional logging added to make it clear if there has been a security problem when activating the feature through the GUI.
BUGFIX: Documents were not being returned in the content query web parts along with list items.
ENHANCEMENT: Allowed sparql results to be picked up and used by classes which inherit from web parts doing SPARQL queries.
BUGFIX: Null reference exception for starting topic when first adding a TopicInformationWebPart to a page
DOCS: Added full documentation of the NetworkedPlanet.Web3.SharePoint.WebParts class
BUGFIX: Fixed error that was reported about thread aborted after setting topic map in CfS site settings
BUGFIX: template mapping bug fix
BUGFIX: Privileges error fixed when deriving from the BaseTopicWebPart
BUGFIX: adding a second label for a newly installed language pack had a bug which was causing the additional label(s) not to be added to the topic term
BUGFIX: Fixed bug that was causing the SPARQL web part not to render any content in certain situations
BUGFIX: content query web parts were displaying unhelpful error if the topic map had not yet been synchronised with the term store
Using PowerShell To POST Data to Web3
Sometimes it is useful to be able to use PowerShell to manipulate a Web3 instance - either because you are scripting a set of batch operations or because you are just in PS at the time and it saves swapping contexts.
POSTing data to a REST service with PS is really easy, the only small wrinkle with Web3 is the need to authenticate with the server. Assuming you are using the default Windows Authentication setup for your Web3 server, the following set of commands should get the job done:
$wc=New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$cred=Get-Credential
$wc.Credentials=$cred
$wc.UploadString($URI, $CONTENT)
The Get-Credential cmdlet will pop-up a dialog prompting for your username and password - if anyone knows of a way to avoid that please let me know! If you need to load the content from a file, use the Get-Content cmdlet.
Web3 Platform Beta Now Available!
The Networked Planet Web3 Platform is a complete solution for creating, organising and publishing structured semantic data. The Web3 platform stores and manages data in a schema less data store, allowing complete flexibility of the shape of the data stored.
This is the first public beta of the NetworkedPlanet Web3 Platform. This beta version is licensed for use until 31st July 2010. We are planning to refresh this Beta release on a regular basis up until the final 1.0 release is available. To keep track of update announcements please subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog.
A small useful ontology and what it tells us about Web3
Implementing Topic Maps solutions for a variety of people we see many ontologies (information models, domain models, schemas) being used. Out of this we have tried to understand how different approaches are useful for different kinds of customers.
One approach, where the customer is a focused specialist group or small company/department who 'know their stuff' really benefit from having a rich ontology as it says more about what they are doing. These are also the people who want to encode knowledge as something explicit and then use that knowledge as part of the information displayed to users of the system.
At the other end of the scale large organisations tend intially to benefit from a less is more approach. This is typically becuase getting 'political' agreement on what the business does and where the focus should be is much harder at the large scale.
It is this second example I want to pick up on here. The most basic, useful ontology that we see in use consists of just three types; Content, Concept and Person. Concepts can be connected to other concepts as 'broader/narrower' and also 'as related'. Content 'is about' concepts, and 'related to' person. Person can be connected to concepts in a few ways that are often tweaked for the domain. e.g. expert in.
This ontology is not the ultimate base model for explaining everything, but more about being able to usefully cover enough about a domain to promote the things that are important in an information management system. (Things such as faceted search, concept centric, bi-directional linking, multiple names and identifiers. All the findability niceness of Topic Maps.)
This model works well because it has recognised that people and content are two fundamental pillars of the way we work with information. Making the users/ people part of the model is critical to be able to deliver targeted contextualised content. This is the kind of content and knowledge people want to see and have access to.
So now we are moving Topic Maps concepts and approaches from the enterprise to the web and in particular the web3 context how can these ontology lessons inform us about how web3 works and the impact it will have?
Well, the biggest observation is that while web1.0 provides content, web2.0 provides people and content there is an obvious gap and therefor need for the third pillar which is concepts. Having concepts on the web will enable people to group and organise the content around the subjects that are important to them.
Having concepts on the web will provide binding points around which content can be produced and grouped, it will facilitate social networking groups to be organised around concepts. Overall having concepts on the web will provide a new and vast dimension to the experience of using this content management system we call the web.
