RDFox v7.2 is out now and brings a diverse array of incredible new additions ranging from a modernistic redesign of the RDFox Console, to delta queries and disk management optimisations. With something for everyone, the newest RDFox user to the seasoned expert, this is certainly not an update to miss!
The most striking change in the latest version of RDFox comes to one of its oldest features—the RDFox Console. Having first been introduced many years ago, the Console has received a modernising update that follows today’s best UX practices to further support and enhance the user experience.
For seasoned users, the new layout and interactions assist efficient query writing and debugging; improve effective data management and visualisation; and simplify the increasingly relevant explainable AI tool.
For new users, the modern feel makes using RDFox simpler and more intuitive than ever before, lowering the barrier to entry and making it even faster to get started.
Watch our RDFox Console video tour for a brief introduction to the new layout including the new locations of the buttons for data store interactions (import, create, delete etc.).
For those interested in our guiding principles, our Lead UX Designer, Robin Richards, has detailed the process and decisions behind the changes in a new blog article.
Delta Queries, RDFox’s latest experimental feature, offer the ability to simply and efficiently monitor changes in your knowledge graph—for some of our clients, the most powerful new functionality introduced with this release.
Real-world applications constantly receive updates to their data and often the change (or ‘delta’) is critical. In some cases, the change signals that an event has occurred and that a workflow should begin; in others, the change impacts emerging insights and calculations which themselves need to be updated; and in complex solutions, the change must be passed on to downstream applications to keep the system self-consistent.
While it has always been possible to track the state of your knowledge graph over time with periodic queries, Delta Queries allow this process to be implemented semi-automatically (upon data store update once registered) and far more efficiently. As the difference in results can be much smaller than the entire results set itself, Delta Queries can be used to drastically optimise relevant implementations.
Delta Queries are particularly powerful when combined with incremental reasoning as rules can be used to generate complex insights and conduct calculations in real-time as data is updated. Delta Queries not only expose the change in explicit data, but also the change in the results inferred by rules, extending the reach of typical delta capturing to include the full power of rules-based AI.
Find out how to use Delta Queries in Section 11.7 of the docs.
Migrating from one version of RDFox to another is now easier than ever with added support for in-place persistence upgrades. Changing versions no longer requires manual transcribing steps as RDFox will now handle the persistence upgrade procedure internally.
By greatly reducing the required effort and expertise, this addition saves time and grants easier access to the very latest features RDFox has to offer.
In our constant effort to be as efficient as possible with all system resources, RDFox v7.2 introduces automatic recovery of disk space during compaction for setups using file-sequence persistence; adding to the existing disk and memory recovery procedures already in place. This is particularly relevant for High Availability (HA) setups which depend on this persistence type. RDFox will now automatically clean up and optimise the space used on disk used when compacting, ensuring data retention while keeping resource requirements and operating costs to a minimum.
Download the latest version of RDFox and start using these features in your applications! If you're not already using RDFox, request a free trial today.
If you’d like to understand more about how these features benefit your use case, book a demo with us for a deep dive.
Join us in the RDFox Community to discuss these new features and for our assistance in implementing them in your production systems.
The team behind Oxford Semantic Technologies started working on RDFox in 2011 at the Computer Science Department of the University of Oxford with the conviction that flexible and high-performance reasoning was a possibility for data-intensive applications without jeopardising the correctness of the results. RDFox is the first market-ready knowledge graph designed from the ground up with reasoning in mind. Oxford Semantic Technologies is a spin-out of the University of Oxford and is backed by leading investors including Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), Oxford Sciences Enterprises (OSE) and Oxford University Innovation (OUI).
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