Welcome to the preview of RacerPro 2.0:
The upcoming version of RacerPro will offer several new features and various improvements compared with its predecessor. Users of the predecessor (including the latest beta version) will notice a performance increase and improved use of available ressources.
Try out the pre-release!
Since the official release of the final version 2.0 still takes some time we have decided to allow you a preview of the upcoming version. You can freely download the version 2.0 for Windows systems, Mac OS X, and for the Linux platform — all 32 bit and x86 processors only. The RacerPro preview software comes with a time-limited trial license included which allows full operation without registering your copy.
RacerPro 2.0 will have all features of previous released versions (further reading) and will offer various improvements and benefits.
For a complete introduction of the new features read through the comprehensive system overview. You may also want to browse the other pages available in the "Version 2.0 preview" submenu on the left.
New features at a glance:
RacerPro server
- OWL2 syntactically supported
RacerPro 2.0 is able to load and process knowledge bases in OWL 2 format. However, some axioms are approximated or ignored for reasoning. - OWLAPI support
One of the main benefits of RacerPro 2.0 is the added connectivity to third-party solutions via the OWLAPI. One example for such tools is Protégé 4 which is currently available as a public beta. In order to utilize the OWLAPI you have to get an appropriate adapter. - OWLlink
OWLlink is the successor of the well-known DIG interface (which is still supported, of course). - Persistency built in: RDFS++ Web 3.0 Database: AllegroGraph TripleStore
You can now access databases of AllegroGraph by Franz Inc. and perform reasoning on the content as well as write back the inferred knowledge (materialization). - Server extensibility
Expand the functionality of your RacerPro server with your own code or by plugins. - New innovative inference services
Abduction, ABox differencing and other new features, e.g. for event recognition. - Query language extensions
The powerful nRQL query and rule language which is unique to RacerPro has been extended which affects the processing of SPARQL for example. - Explanation component
RacerPro 2.0 Preview features some new explanation and ontology debugging mechanisms in order to trace down inconsistencies in ontologies. More info can be found here. - Performance improvements
RacerPro can now work with an even broader variety of ontologies. Especially SNOMED should be mentioned here, since new optimization techniques have been realized in order to increase the performance. - Support for external formats and locales
RacerPro can read and maintain text files in certain locales or in UTF8 format.
RacerPorter, the ontology development environment: What′s New
- Better Shell with Command, Argument, Filename Completion, Basic Function Documentation, ...
- Interactive Browsing by incremental inspection for large knoledge bases through a "Drill Down" visualization
- OWLAPI Axiom Editor
More details about the new features can be found here.
We also provide a comprehensive overview over the RacerPro 2.0 reasoning environment.
What else is important?
How to install and use
RacerPro 2.0 is currently provided as compressed archives (and not as installers). This makes it easy to download and install your copy of the preview software to fit into your setup. Hence, you can test-drive the new features without disturbing your existing and verified configuration. Though version 2.0 and 1.9.x can exist side-by-side on your local hard drive, they can′t run simultaneously at the same time without certain precautions: for example, you have to configure at least one of the RacerPro instances to use non-default TCP/IP ports in order to avoid conflicts.
The included RacerPorter is also of version 2.0 and is thus compatible with the preview version of RacerPro 2.0. It is recommended that you keep both executables (the program files) as well as the other contents of the archive together in the same directory of your hard drive.
For RacerPorter some system libraries are necessary that might not be installed on your system. If RacerPorter fails to start with an appropriate error message, please install the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable. On Linux the OpenMotif library is required. On Ubuntu Linux you may try sudo apt-get install libmotif3.
Consult the general update information page for more information about the installation of RacerPro.
Support
We regret, but for now the manual set has not been updated. (This is one of the reasons for not offering the software as a final release now.)
Since this preview software is not a final release we can not provide end user assistance. However, we are very interested in your feedback! So please provide us with your comments and thoughts — email to <No JavaScript: support at racer-systems dot com> preferred.
License
RacerPro 2.0 comes with a standard trial license which activates all features of the software for use until August 31, 2010. After that date the software will stop working and has to be replaced with a new download and license. In the meantime we may update the preview software with new builds or server plugins. Check the download page for new items.
In case you already have a valid personal license and respective license file, it will not cover version 2.0 at all. Since the preview software will simply ignore its existence it does not harm your current setup. Regarding AllegroGraph RacerPro 2 preview comes with a license for 50 million triples which should cover the majority of test cases. If you need any assistance regarding licenses we and our sales partners will be happy to assist you.
As soon as the final release of version 2.0 is available you might want to upgrade your environment with the final software which will require a valid license covering version 2.0. Please contact your sales person for more information about the planned licensing scheme, pricing and availability.
Terms and conditions
RacerPro 2.0 is provided AS IS without any warranty. Use it on your own risk. Even though we put tremendous effort in providing a well-crafted software that meets the high quality expectations of our customers, we can not guarantee the absense of flaws or errors (bugs).
Last but not least: Acknowledgments
The authors of RacerPro and the team of Racer Systems GmbH & Co. KG would like to thank all contributors whose input has helped to add important functionality, optimize the system for particular applications as well as to identify bugs: The comments and feedback of our fellow researchers, the colleagues who participated in the development, and the reports we received from our beta testers and customers are highly appreciated.
We would like to point out that feedback from the user community is always a valuable factor for us, although not all contacts from numerous friutful discussions can be named here. Having said that, we nevertheless would like to explicity mention Britta Hummel from University of Karlsruhe, Marko Luther from DOCOMO Communications Laboratories Europe GmbH, and the team at Ulm University, especially Olaf Noppens, for their intensive long-term support.