Ruby RDF 2.0 Beta1

Ruby RDF 2.0

We are preparing for the 2.0 release of RDF.rb and related gems. This announces the general availability of RDF.rb 2.0.0.beta1 along with other gems collected in the linkeddata meta-gem. Note that this release introduces breaking changes from the 1.* version; in most cases, these are highlighted using deprecation messages if using 1.99.

New Features

• Readers and Writers now using RDF::Util::Logger for managing error, warning, information, and debug messages, which allow them to be managed more flexibly and consistently.
• Substantially revised RDF::Transaction, which now serves as a scope for ACID transactions. Transactions are now read-only by default; for read/write transactions, use Transaction.new(mutable: true) or Repository#transaction(mutable: true). Transactions can be applied to an RDF::Transactable (in the core: Repository or Graph).
• Introduced RDF::Changeset as a set of deletes & inserts which can be applied to a Mutable. The default RDF::Transaction for custom Repository implementations uses aChangeset, which is applied to the Repository.
• Introduced RDF::Dataset as a read-only super-class of Repository, which can be provided by using Repository#snapshot, among other methods.
• The in-memory Repository implementation now uses [Hamster::Hash][] to implement a fully functional interface for updating repositories, saving a number of explicit dup operations in queries and allowing fully isolated snapshots and serializable transactions at minimal cost. As a side-effect, there is no guarantee that insert order of statements in a Graph or Repository will be maintained.

Deprecated Interfaces in 1.99

These changes result in a DEPRECATION warning in 1.99, and errors in 2.*:

• Minimum Ruby version no MRI 2.0 or equivalent 2.3 or greater preferred.
• Numerous vocabularies have been moved to the rdf-vocab gem, for example RDF::Vocab::FOAF instead of RDF::FOAF.
• Many interfaces would take a :context option, this has been replaced with :graph_name to more properly correspond to RDF 1.1 concepts. This also includes #context and #context=, #has_context?, and #each_context methods in various modules and classes.
• Vocabulary.label_for is replaced with Vocabulary::Term#label* Vocabulary.comment_for is replaced with Vocabulary::Term#comment
• #write_graph and #write_statements are replaced with RDF::Writable#insert
• Writer#format_value is deprecated in favor of Writer#format_term
• NTriples::Reader no longer supports Surrogate Pairs.
• Many interfaces now use [keyword arguments][https://robots.thoughtbot.com/ruby-2-keyword-arguments] instead of positional arguments.

Deprecated interfaces in 2.0

• List#initialize now uses keyword arguments instead of positional arguments. This is a breaking change which cannot support backwards compatibility, but shouldn't affect most normal use.
• Graph#initialize now uses keyword arguments instead of positional arguments. Positional arguments are accepted with a deprecation message until 2.0.0 is released.
• Transaction is completely changed, and existing use from 1.x is unlikely to work without modification in 2.x. Users of the 1.x Transaction who are not interested in ACID transactions should look at RDF::Changeset, which is more similar to the old interface.

Ruby gems will not automatically load beta gems via gem update. To get these gems you must explicitly include them using gem install --pre linkeddata.