VIVO v1.7 Release Notes
What is this document?
The VIVO 1.7 Release Announcement covers the main features of the release at a high level but leaves out a number of helpful specifics. This document is intended to help those planning to implement the release as either a new installation or upgrade to learn more about new features and find pointers to more complete documentation elsewhere on this wiki.
Integration with the ORCID registry
VIVO sites now have the option of registering their installation with ORCID. This will allow interaction, whereby a VIVO user can log in to their ORCID account to confirm their identity, and store a pointer to their VIVO profile in their ORCID record.
Updates to software libraries
The Jena library was updated from 2.6.4 to 2.10.1 to take advantage of bug fixes and performance improvements. This leads in turn to a change in how the display parameters and user accounts are stored.
The Solr library was updated from 3.1.0 to 4.7.2, partly so that VIVO-related projects could take advantage of recent features in Solr.
The HttpClient library was updated from 3.1 to 4.2.5, for compatibility with the ORCID integration code.
Improvements to APIs
In VIVO 1.7 a SPARQL Query API was added, similar in form to the SPARQL Update API. These APIs now provide consistent support for authentication and content negotiation.
VIVO already supports API calls for Linked Open Data, and for obtaining lists of Individuals in the knowledge base. These APIs have been improved to provide content negotiation, and have been made more robust.
Find more information about the APIs here: The VIVO APIs.
Knowledge Base Export
New options have been added to permit exporting the entire knowledge base in a variety of formats. The export includes graph information for each triple, so the knowledge base could be completely reconstructed from an export file.
Search Engine modularization
The Solr code has been partitioned from the rest of the application, behind a SearchEngine interface. This should make it much more easy to replace Solr with a different search engine. Future releases will see additional improvements in modularity, but this is a much-requested beginning to the process.
Additions to the Developer Panel
The Developer Panel was added in VIVO 1.6, to help expose the inner workings of a running VIVO site, as an aid to people who are customizing VIVO or developing new features. In VIVO 1.7, additional features help to monitor the search engine process, and the authorization logic. More here: The Developer Panel
