As I write this newsitem I'm uploading the new version of MetaModel to the maven repositories! So let me take the time to tell you what's new in this release.

First of all I'd like to say that this is really a release with lots of fundamental changes and we have sacrificed backwards-compatibility at some places, so be sure to check that everything is working exactly as before. That said - those things that we have changed will also cause you compilation problems, so if you do a drop-in replacement and your build fails, then it's because the features have changed. We think this is the easiest way for everybody to deal with changes - it's a lot more obvious that you need to do something if it's really keeping your application from working! The good thing is that the new MetaModel provides a lot of great improvements and new features!

Here's a sum-up of the changes made to MetaModel from version 1.0 to 1.1:

• We've done a major restructuring of the project as to make it more modular and easier to figure out.
• This also means that the way you create  DataContext objects have changed. In 1.0 you used the constructor of DataContext. This approach have been replaced by a factory class, which does all the instantiation and initialization stuff for you:  DataContextFactory.
• The MetaModel project is now LGPL licensed instead of using the Apache License version 2.0. For more info see MetaModelLicense.
• The built-in query-engine, "Query postprocessor", which is used to serve CSV, Excel and XML content, have gone through numerous improvements to performance and functinality.
• Column types can now be detected, narrowed and transformed using the Query postprocessor engine. This means that you can use the engine to detect and retrieve Integer, Double, Date, Time and Boolean types as well as the old String-based values, even from text-only datastores such as CSV files.
• The JDBC datastores now have a query rewriter component which allows for optimization of queries using native SQL-syntax.
• Query postprocessor now also generates information schemas used to investigate metadata about CSV, Excel and XML files.
• Database compliancy have grown constantly during development and will keep doing so forward on. You can check the supported databases here: MetaModelCompliancy

All in all I think this release marks a high degree of maturity for the MetaModel project and we're very proud to present it to you!

As we're moving steadily along towards the release of DataCleaner 1.5 we are fixing a few bugs and enhancing a lot of features. This leads to the desire to release our work since practically nothing has undergone changes that could destabilize the application since the 1.4 release. So today we're releasing DataCleaner 1.5 "snapshot". This also marks the first release under our new LGPL license.

Here are the changes from 1.4 so far:

• Change of license to LGPL.
• New profile: Date mask matcher.
• New profile: Regex matcher.
• More file types supported (.dat, .txt)
• XML file support improved (.xml)

Although this is in principle a development/beta release, we feel that it would be worth working with for most of your profiling needs. So... Go on, download it, tell us what you think and we'll see you around!

We've made a principal decision at eobjects.org to change the preferred license of our projects from the Apache License 2.0 to the Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

The main difference between the two licenses are that the LGPL requires any modifications to be contributed back to the Open Source community (ie. licensed under a similar license; LGPL or GPL). The eobjects.org projects are gaining the obvious advantages of the LGPL by ensuring that improvements are submitted back to the projects. This also means that we don't risk that anyone sell modified versions of our projects. It is still just as appropriate to use the projects as a part of commercial applications, but any modifications must be contributed back to the community.

• The Apache License 2.0:  http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
• Lesser General Public License:  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt

Initially this change in license will affect the two flagship projects of eobjects.org: DataCleaner and MetaModel. This means that the next versions of these projects (DataCleaner 1.5 and MetaModel 1.1 accordingly) will be LGPL licensed. Also, new projects will be LGPL licensed unless special circumstances suggest otherwise.