eXist Developer's Blog

One of the outstanding new features in the development version of eXist is the ability to index and query the content of binary resources, which are stored inside the database. This is made possible through a new XQuery module for content extraction and some basic, but powerful additions to the Lucene-based full text indexing. Our goal was to provide as much flexibility to the user as possible. The new functions are thus rather generic and can be used in a wide range of scenarios.

eXist's development version (to become v1.5) provides a number of new features to simplify the process of creating, deploying and distributing XQuery-based apps. An "app" in this context is a self-contained package, which can be downloaded from a public or private repository and installed into any instance of eXist-db with a few mouse clicks. The app may just package a bunch of XQuery library modules or (REST-style) interfaces, or it may contain an entire, complex web application.

There are many different paths to create an application with eXist, which is good. But this also makes it difficult for new users to find their way. The new app repository as well as eXide try to simplify the process for people to get started (just keep in mind that not every app will fit into this framework).

Upon request, I created a short screencast to demonstrate how simple it is to use the package repository to install entire applications into eXist. This is just a teaser and does not explain how to actually create app packages. I have a longer video in the pipeline which explains just that (eXide actually handles most of the setup work for you).

For the next release of eXist, we plan to ship all example code and parts of the documentation as apps, which can be installed on demand. This will lead to a cleaner installation and make it easier for people to find their way through the examples.

Monday, 15th August 2011

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

The eXist-db team are very proud to announce the release of eXist-db version 1.4.1.

Version 1.4.1 is not your average point release and concludes almost two years of hard work from the developers, contributors and the community. There are more bug-fixes and stability improvements that you can shake a very pointy stick at, and we believe that it is the best version of eXist-db yet.

There is far too much to pack into a short list, the full change list can be found here but, the highlights include:

1. Referential Integrity – no more vanishing index entries, so no more failed document updates and inconsistent documents.
2. Database Shutdown and Crash Protection – numerous improvements by us, which means less unnecessary recovery runs by you.
3. WebDAV – completely new implementation, based on the solid Milton WebDAV Server library. Enabled by default, but don't panic, the old version is still present should you need it!
4. Lucene Full-Text Indexing – upgraded to version 2.9.2 for a performance boost, configurable analyzers, configurable parameters, better match highlighting and additional functions for working with Lucene document fields.
5. XForms – The betterFORM server-side XForms 1.1 engine now ships with eXist-db and is enabled by default. The included XSLTForms XForms engine has been updated.
6. EXPath – The EXPath projects HTTP Client XQuery module has been implemented as a first step towards EXPath portable XQuery.
7. Improved transaction handling – scheduled and direct system tasks no longer need exclusive access to the database. e.g. the Backup system task can operate whilst your database is still online.
8. Indexing architecture – many improvements for both performance and stability.
9. Resolution of all reported database lock contention issues.

Heads Up! → As we mentioned, this is no ordinary point release, and as such the legacy full-text index in eXist-db 1.4 has been disabled by default in 1.4.1. The legacy full-text index can of course be re-enabled through conf.xml, however there are several integrity issues that we will not fix, instead we suggest moving to the newer Lucene based full-text index.

We have tried to ensure that upgrading from eXist-db 1.4 to 1.4.1 is as easy as possible, however should you need some assistance or support above and beyond what the community provides then please consider eXist Solutions, without whom this release would not have been possible.

Version 1.4.1 will most likely be the last major release in the 1.4.x line. Whilst we are also planning to release a preview of eXist-db 1.6 in the next couple of months, 1.4.1 should be considered the current stable, suitable for production use, version of eXist-db.

Finally, we would like to thank the eXist-db community, contributors and developers for all their hard work on eXist-db 1.4.1.

Thanks and Enjoy :-)

eXist-db version 1.4.1 is available here - http://www.exist-db.org/download.html

Thank you

The eXist-db team

Original message appeared on the exist-open mailing list.

After weeks of hard work we are happy to announce the availability of the "Release Candidate" of exist-db release 1.4.1 "Eindhoven"

The revision (15097) contains a number of fixes and code ports from the 1.5/trunk codebase. The highlights:

A detailed changelog is available.

Notes:

• The legacy Full-Text index has been disabled by default, for stability reasons. A clear error message (exception) will be shown if an xquery depends on the deprecate feature. This index will be removed completely in future versions, while a better alternative (lucene) is available.
• We expect that revision 1.4.1 will be the last version of the 1.4.x family, unless there are strong reasons for a 1.4.2 version.
• The 1.4.1 version will be released soon, please provide us feedback on issues you found.

The release candidate can be downloaded from sourceforge using the following links:

• Installers: .jar (cross-platform) and .exe for Windows
• For Tomcat: .war

Additional notes:

• Build with build.sh clean clean-all installer-exe dist-war
• Do not use the latest iZpack installer, this version contains a bug which makes the command line installer fail to work. Use version 4.3.3 instead.
• Re-uploaded rev15097 (with script fixes) since 15091 was built using Java6