[Swoop] Announcement: New Swoop Beta Release (v2.3 beta 1)

[Aditya Kalyanpur]

We have just released a new beta version of Swoop -- v 2.3 beta 1. You
can download it from:

http://www.mindswap.org/2004/SWOOP/downloads/SWOOP-2.3beta1.zip

This version has the following new features:

* It includes the latest version (v1.3b) of the Pellet OWL DL reasoner
[1] which allows you to reason over large, complex ontologies such as
Wine, Galen, Pizza etc.

* Explanation support for all inferences computed by Pellet -- note
that inferences are displayed in italics in the Concise Format entity
view, and now there is a "Why?" link next to each inference while in
Pellet mode. Clicking on this link pops up an explanation window which
displays the set of axioms responsible for the inference. See [2] for
a screenshot example.

* Also, debugging support is now included in this version, i.e, if you
have an inconsistent ontology or unsatisfiable classes, use
"Advanced->Debugging Modes" options on the main menu to turn on
explanations for the errors. (see [3] for more on debugging)

* Crop-Circle visualization of the class hierarchy - "Advanced->Fly
the MotherShip"..see [4] for more on CropCircles

* Support for adding arbitrary class expressions. (see a glimpse of the UI [5])

* Support for creating, viewing and deleting GCI's (General Concept
Inclusion axioms) in the ontology. You can view GCI's in the
alphabetical list by choosing the appropriate filter "Show GCIs"

* Advanced Ontology Statistics - such as no. of GCIs, disjoint axioms,
functional properties, max/min depths of class/property trees etc.

* Experimental Version Control System ("Advanced->Version Control") -
uses change capturing in Swoop + publishing mechanism using Annotea:
Specify a repository location, and a base ontology URI, and each
change made using Swoop is logged and can be committed in an annotated
change set to the repository (see sample screenshot [6])

+ some other bug fixes and UI improvements...

Note that since this is a beta release, stability is an issue,
however, it is feature complete. Our plan is to now focus on ironing
out all the bugs and tuning the features.

Feel free to send us bug reports, suggestions for improvements,
general thoughts etc. (issue tracker: http://www.mindswap.org/issues/)

Cheers,
Aditya

[1] http://www.mindswap.org/2003/pellet/
[2] http://www.mindswap.org/2004/SWOOP/images/explInfr.png
[3] http://www.mindswap.org/2005/debugging/
[4] http://www.mindswap.org/2005/cropcircles/
[5] http://www.mindswap.org/2004/SWOOP/images/classExpr.png
[6] http://www.mindswap.org/2004/SWOOP/images/versioncontrol.png