VIVO 1.9 Release Planning

Release 1.9 is expected to be a features release, aligned with VIVO Roadmap Process, and addressing its four major themes: 1) getting data out of VIVO using APIs, 2) getting data in to VIVO using best practices, 3) improved VIVO performance, 4) improved VIVO visualizations.

Suggested Features for Release 1.9

• Maven build process
  • Maven for build process.  We expect to replace the current ant-based build process with a Maven-based process.  The new process will simplify building VIVO, simplify the creation of a VIVO development environment for Java developer, simplify the management of dependencies
  • Include the build of VIVO Vagrant with the Maven-based build process.  This would simplify the creation of a Vagrant and insure code lineage with the VIVO distribution.
  • Reduce code dependencies.  VIVO contains a number of dependencies that can be eliminated.  Others will be upgraded.  All will be managed by Maven.
• Benchmarks
  • Plan to include substantial test data, benchmark tests and publish benchmark results.  Developers can use these benchmarks to insure that performance is improving.  Installers can use benchmarks to gauge the adequacy of their environments compared to standard VIVO environments.
• Triple Store Support
  • Working with triple store vendors, address issues related to triple store support
  • Provide build processes for alternate triple stores
  • Provide benchmark results for alternate triple store

Additional Suggestions for the next release

• Modularization: Continue modularization: abox reasoner.
  • Break out the ABox reasoner, with options to:
    • Disable the SimpleReasoner
    • Use the SimpleReasoner only to find most specific type
    • Use the SimpleReasoner as we currently do
    • Use an alternate reasoner
• Performance: Search indexer
  • Restructure the indexer for:
    • Better multi-threaded performance
    • Fewer unnecessary SPARQL queries
    • More configuration options
• Ease of use: move the theme to the home directory
  • New themes or modifications won't require re-building VIVO
  • Enables wider usage of the Binary release (below)
• Ease of use: Binary release
  • Installation instructions:
    • unpack the Zip,
    • set configuration options,
    • run.
  • Based on TDB and Jetty (instead of Tomcat)
  • Requires: Java Runtime Environment
  • Does not require:
    • Ant,
    • MySQL
    • Tomcat
    • Java Development Kit
    • Vagrant
• Ease of use: Installation recommendations
  • For testing and experimenting, the binary release
    • Allows theme changes (see above), configuration changes, RDF changes
    • Anything that doesn't require changes to the code.
  • For enterprise installations or Java changes, the three-tier build.
  • Don't recommend the two-tier build.