Allegro CL General / Technical Announcements

Friday, April 28, 2017

Franz (+ Lisp Graph) Newsletter - May 2017

In this issue

Allegro CL 10.1 - Now Available!

ACL 10.1 New Features

64-bit Linux ARM (aka ARM64 or ARMv8): both SMP and non-SMP
New external format: GB18030
For macOS and Windows: executable signing
Character tables updated to Unicode 9.0.0
OpenSSL is dynamically loaded rather than statically linked (this was available as a patch, so you can remove this if you want)
defstruct slot-option validation

xmlrpc now uses the SAX parser rather than the older, deprecated XML parser
The IDE's trace dialog reports the elapsed time for each traced call
Iimplements "grab_fast_mutex" for all architectures, leading to performance improvements for multiprocessing on some architectures
GC improvements
- find-gcpath: A new tool to help locate the reason specific objects are being kept alive across garbage collections (see documentation)
- collected-newstuff: A tool to help analyze the heap allocations made while executing a block of code. (see documentation)
- Handle exceptions during gc: Exceptions during gc are now reported, with a mechanism for using a low-level (non-lisp) debugger to analyze the problem
- Misc performance enhancements for the global gc
With more than 200 fixes and 150 enhancements (see the release notes for the highlights), this release focuses on stability and some important new features.

See here for additional information.

Tech Corner Article: Allegro CL Now Runs on the ARM-64 Platform

The ARM-64 processor (also called the ARMv8, the Aarch64, and the ARM64) is a RISC processor particularly adapted to smaller devices. The Wikipedia description is aten.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture and the company which designed the processor describes it at www.arm.com/products/processors. Allegro CL 10.1, recently released, runs on the ARM-64. Only the 64-bit version of Allegro CL is supported. There are both SMP and non-SMP versions. Common Graphics and the IDE runs on the non-SMP version. (CG and the IDE are not currently supported on any Linux SMP version.)

See here for the details.

Trappist-1 Exoplanets and Allegro CL - The SIRPASS Story

Astronomers are celebrating a new discovery, a treasure trove of planets found. The big news is that around a very nearby, cold, small star, there are seven rocky Earth-sized planets, all of which could potentially have liquid water. Three of them orbit in the habitable zone around the star. The planetary system is called Trappist-1. JPL's David S. Mittman and STSI's Robert Hawkins have co-authored a white paper that describes the project environment in which the Spitzer Integratesd Resource Planning and Scheduling System (SIRPASS) was developed and used in operations. SIRPASS is the last known adaptation of the Plan-IT II planning and sequencing tool. In the paper, they explain that because the Plan-IT II software architecture utilizes a highly object-oriented design, the core software can be easily extended for specific scheduling problem domains. Plan-IT II is developed in Allegro CL, a dynamic object-oriented development environment for ANSI Common Lisp from Franz, Inc.

See here for additional information.

Bloor Research Positions Franz's AllegroGraph as a 'Champion' and Highest Ranked in Graph Database Market

Franz Inc.'s flagship product, AllegroGraph, has been named a 'Champion' by Bloor Research in its recent Graph Database Market Update report.

"AllegroGraph is the highest ranked product in its class, and, thanks to Gruff, it was rated as the easiest product to use." - Bloor Research

AllegroGraph is a database technology that enables businesses to extract sophisticated decision insights and predictive analytics from highly complex, distributed data that cannot be uncovered with conventional databases. Unlike traditional databases or NoSQL databases, AllegroGraph employs semantic graph technologies that process data with contextual and conceptual intelligence. AllegroGraph is able run queries of unprecedented complexity to support predictive analytics that help organizations make more informed, real-time decisions.

For additional information, see here.

Recorded Webcast: The Power of Machine Learning and Graphs

Graphs and Machine Learning have long been a focus for Franz Inc. and currently we are collaborating with a number of companies to deliver the ability to understand possible future events based on a company's internal as well as externally available data. By combining machine learning, semantic technologies, big data, graph databases and dynamic visualizations we will discuss the core components of a Cognitive Computing platform. We discussed example Cognitive Computing platforms from Ecommerce, fraud detection and healthcare that combine structured/unstructured data, knowledge, linked open data, predictive analytics, and machine learning to enhance corporate decision making.

To view the recorded webcast, see here.

Database Trends and Apps Report - Building a Data Lake for the Enterprise

Data lakes are forming as a response to todayfs big data challenges, offering a cost-effective way to maintain and manage immense data resources that hold both current and future potential to the enterprise. However, enterprises need to build these environments with great care and consideration, as these potentially critical business resources could quickly lose their way with loose governance, insecure protocols, and redundant data.

To learn about how AllegroGraph is in use for Montefiore Medical Center's Semantic Data Lake, see here.

Upcoming Events - Graph Day and GeoInt

Please join us for Graph Day SF 17 in San Francisco - June 17th and GEOINT 2017 June 4-7 in San Antonio.

Recent Articles about Franz

	KM World article - KM resurgence in Life Sciences
	IoT Evolution article - IoT Will Become Part of Cognitive Computing
	Tech Crunch article - Putting data back into the hands of owners

Follow us on Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube

Training Schedule

BECOME ALLEGRO CERTIFIED - To obtain your Allegro CL Certification enroll in our LIVE Program which offers developers an opportunity to learn and improve their Lisp programming skills from the comfort of their home or office while interacting with the Franz instructor.

Lisp Programming Series Level I: Basic Lisp Essentials - June 7, 14, and 21

Lisp Programming Series Level II: Specialized Components of Lisp - July 5, 12, and 19

For additional information and to register, see here.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Allegro CL 10.1 Free Express Edition - Now Available

DOWNLOAD - LINK

ACL 10.1 New Features

64-bit Linux ARM (aka ARM64 or ARMv8): both SMP and non-SMP
New external format: GB18030
For macOS and Windows: executable signing
Character tables updated to Unicode 9.0.0
OpenSSL is dynamically loaded rather than statically linked (this was available as a patch, so you can remove this if you want)
defstruct slot-option validation

xmlrpc now uses the SAX parser rather than the older, deprecated XML parser
The IDE's trace dialog reports the elapsed time for each traced call
Iimplements "grab_fast_mutex" for all architectures, leading to performance improvements for multiprocessing on some architectures
GC improvements
- find-gcpath: A new tool to help locate the reason specific objects are being kept alive across garbage collections (see documentation)
- collected-newstuff: A tool to help analyze the heap allocations made while executing a block of code. (see documentation)
- Handle exceptions during gc: Exceptions during gc are now reported, with a mechanism for using a low-level (non-lisp) debugger to analyze the problem
- Misc performance enhancements for the global gc
With more than 200 fixes and 150 enhancements (see the release notes for the highlights), this release focuses on stability and some important new features.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Franz (+ Lisp Graph) Newsletter - January 2017

In this issue

Allegro CL 10.1 - Beta Test Period Ending January 31st

ACL 10.1 New Features

64-bit Linux ARM (aka ARM64 or ARMv8): both SMP and non-SMP
New external format: GB18030
For macOS and Windows: executable signing
Character tables updated to Unicode 9.0.0
OpenSSL is dynamically loaded rather than statically linked (this was available as a patch, so you can remove this if you want)
defstruct slot-option validation

xmlrpc now uses the SAX parser rather than the older, deprecated XML parser
The IDE's trace dialog reports the elapsed time for each traced call
Iimplements "grab_fast_mutex" for all architectures, leading to performance improvements for multiprocessing on some architectures
GC improvements
- find-gcpath: A new tool to help locate the reason specific objects are being kept alive across garbage collections (see documentation)
- collected-newstuff: A tool to help analyze the heap allocations made while executing a block of code. (see documentation)
- Handle exceptions during gc: Exceptions during gc are now reported, with a mechanism for using a low-level (non-lisp) debugger to analyze the problem
- Misc performance enhancements for the global gc
With more than 200 fixes and 150 enhancements (see the release notes for the highlights), this release focuses on stability and some important new features.

Users interested in becoming beta testers should contact info@franz.com for more information.

Smart Data Conference - San Francisco, Jan. 30 - Feb. 1

The Premier Business Conference focused on Smart Data and Machine Intelligence Technologies. The Smart Data Conference is designed to accommodate all levels of technical understanding. It will bring together emerging disciplines that are focused on more intelligent information gathering and analysis.

See here for more information and to register.

Tech Corner Article: A New Feature of the Runtime Analyzer

A new feature of the runtime analyzer, introduced in Allegro CL version 10.0, is a real-time profiler. The existing time profiler estimates CPU time spent in various functions so developers can see which functions would most benefit from optimization, but CPU idle time is ignored. The real-time profiler takes CPU idle time into account, and reports on the real time spent in functions, both when calculations are being done and when the CPU is idle. This information can be important for user interfaces, as users simply see delays and do not care whether the delay is because the system is idle (typically waiting for some response) or working away.

See here for additional information.

The 10th European Lisp Symposium, April 3-4, Brussels, Belgium

The purpose of the European Lisp Symposium is to provide a forum for the discussion and dissemination of all aspects of design, implementationand application of any of the Lisp and Lisp-inspired dialects, including Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, AutoLisp, ISLISP, Dylan, Clojure, ACL2, ECMAScript, Racket, SKILL, Hop and so on. We encourage everyone interested in Lisp to participate.

This year's ELS will be co-located with the Programming 2017 Conference!

For additional information about the conference, see here.

TechCrunch article - Putting data back into the hands of owners

In healthcare there is a growing desire for patients to own their medical records. Interestingly, this desire is not coming from patients, it's based on the view from medical practitioners that patient care and quality of life is directly influenced by the ability of patients to access and utilize their data. This view is core to the Precision Medicine Initiative, a White House program for personalizing healthcare treatment for individuals and groups that have historically been underrepresented. Its mission statement points out that "Success will require that health data is portable, that it can be easily shared between providers, researchers, and most importantly, patients and research participants"...

See here to read the full article.

Recent Articles about Franz

	Oxford Journals - Briefing in Bioinformatics - How the strengths of Lisp-family languages facilitate building complex and flexible bioinformatics applications
	Virtual Strategy Magazine article - Why Semantics & Data Linking is Vital to Artificial Intelligence
	KMWorld article - How does precision medicine become a reality? The Semantic Data Lake for Healthcare makes it possible
	HealthIT Analytics article - Semantic Computing, Predictive Analytics Need Reliable Metadata
	insideBIGDATA article - The Magic of Visual Querying

Follow us on Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube

Training Schedule

Lisp Programming Series Level I: Basic Lisp Essentials - Feburary 8, 15, and 22

Lisp Programming Series Level II: Specialized Components of Lisp - March 8, 15, and 22

For additional information and to register, see here.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Franz's (+ Lisp Graph) Newsletter - December 2016

In this issue

Allegro CL 10.1 - Call for Beta Testers

ACL 10.1 New Features

64-bit Linux ARM (aka ARM64 or ARMv8): both SMP and non-SMP
New external format: GB18030
For macOS and Windows: executable signing
Character tables updated to Unicode 9.0.0
OpenSSL is dynamically loaded rather than statically linked (this was available as a patch, so you can remove this if you want)
defstruct slot-option validation

xmlrpc now uses the SAX parser rather than the older, deprecated XML parser
The IDE's trace dialog reports the elapsed time for each traced call
Iimplements "grab_fast_mutex" for all architectures, leading to performance improvements for multiprocessing on some architectures
GC improvements
- find-gcpath: A new tool to help locate the reason specific objects are being kept alive across garbage collections (see documentation)
- collected-newstuff: A tool to help analyze the heap allocations made while executing a block of code. (see documentation)
- Handle exceptions during gc: Exceptions during gc are now reported, with a mechanism for using a low-level (non-lisp) debugger to analyze the problem
- Misc performance enhancements for the global gc
With more than 200 fixes and 150 enhancements (see the release notes for the highlights), this release focuses on stability and some important new features.

Users interested in becoming beta testers should contact info@franz.com for more information.

Tech Corner Article: The New Interface to OpenSSL

The interface between Allegro CL and OpenSSL was significantly changed in updates released in July, 2016. Before the update, an OpenSSL library was included with the Allegro CL distribution and newer OpenSSL libraries had to be included in an Allegro CL update before they could be used. Now, OpenSSL libraries are loaded dynamically on startup so Allegro CL and its applications can benefit from new releases as soon as they become available.

See The new interface to OpenSSL for more information about this change.

The 10th European Lisp Symposium, April 3-4, Brussels, Belgium

This year's ELS will be co-located with the Programming 2017 Conference!

For additional information about the conference, see here.

The Express Version's Expiration Date has been Updated

The original 10.0 Express expired on 2016-12-16. Downloads after August 15, 2016 include a license that expires on 2017-12-16. If you downloaded prior to August 15, 2016 and do not wish to download the new version, you can download just the new devel.lic and replace your current one with this new version. Look in your devel.lic for the Expiration date to find out if you need to update it. If you are not running version 10.0, then please download the latest Express version.

See here for additional information and to download the software.

KM World article - How does precision medicine become a reality?

One of the prominent problems plaguing the current healthcare system is the narrow scope of patient data used to facilitate most aspects of care, from initial diagnoses to treatment. According to Dr. Parsa Mirhaji, director of clinical research informatics at Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the vast majority of research findings are based on averages of middle-aged white males: "We don't really know much about women, other ethnicities, children, you name it - there's no evidence," he says.

The White House launched The Precision Medicine Initiative in 2015 as a means of redressing the situation and expanding the breadth of patient data to personalize treatment for individuals and historically underrepresented groups. Achieving that objective requires not only amassing patient-specific data for wider demographics, but also storing, accessing and analyzing them with a number of avant-garde data management technologies...

See here to read the full article.

ODBMS Industry Watch article - On data analytics for finance. Interview with RavenPack's Jason S.Cornez

Roberto V. Zicari interviews RavenPack's Chief Technology Officer - "Understanding human language remains a difficult problem. The challenges here are not only technical, but there is also a perception from popular culture that computers today perform at the level we see in science fiction. So there is a gap between what is expected and what is possible." - Jason S.Cornez.

Visit here to read the full article...

Building a Fun Ethereum Game, by Conrad Barski

Conrad Barski is building a Fun Ethereum Game. (Author's note: The goal of this series of posts will be to build a minimally viable multiplayer game on the ethereum blockchain, with support for scarce resources and appropriate protections against economic attacks.) Edwalt had finally found the nightshade, obsidian vapors, and mantis mushrooms he needed to open the magic portal into the next realm...

Visit his website to get in the game...

Recent Articles about Franz - AllegroGraph

	HealthIT Analytics article - Semantic Computing, Predictive Analytics Need Reliable Metadata
	insideBIGDATA article - The Magic of Visual Querying
	Knowledge Management World article - Text analytics and beyond
	ModernMedicine Network article - Making sense of big data: Data projects spur progress
	DB Engines article - Enriching Property Graphs with Relationship Objects
	AnalyticsWeek article - Enterprise Data Modeling Made Easy

Follow us on Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube

Training Schedule

Lisp Programming Series Level I: Basic Lisp Essentials - Feburary 8, 15, and 22

Lisp Programming Series Level II: Specialized Components of Lisp - March 8, 15, and 22

For additional information and to register, see here.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Allegro CL v10.1 Beta - Now Available

New Allegro CL 10.1 features

64-bit Linux ARM (aka ARM64 or ARMv8): both SMP and non-SMP
For macOS and Windows: executable signing
Character tables updated to Unicode 9.0.0
OpenSSL is dynamically loaded rather than statically linked
defstruct slot-option validation
xmlrpc now uses the SAX parser rather than the older, deprecated XML parser
The IDE's trace dialog reports the elapsed time for each traced call
Implements "grab_fast_mutex" for all architectures, leading to performance improvements for multiprocessing on some architectures
GC improvements
- find-gcpath: A new tool to help locate the reason specific objects are being kept alive across garbage collections
- collected-newstuff: a tool to help analyze the heap allocations made while executing a block of code
- Handle exceptions during GC: Exceptions during GC are now reported, with a mechanism for using a low-level (non-lisp) debugger to analyze the problem
- Miscellaneous performance enhancements for the global GC
New external format: GB18030
Source-level stepper improvements (these are not yet documented but will be during the beta period):
- Top-level stepper is less verbose and stays with source forms, instead of macroexpanding
- IDE stepper is better integrated with the base Lisp, and shows steps more intuitively
With more than 200 fixes and 150 enhancements (see the release notes for the highlights), this release focuses on stability and some important new features.

Download - http://franz.com/beta10.1_ae3527fb/index.lhtml

Monday, May 2, 2016

Franz's (+ Lisp Graph) Tech Corner - May 2016

In this issue

The 9th European Lisp Symposium, May 9-10, Krakow, Poland

The conference will be held at the Department of Computer Science, AGH University of Science and Technology, in Krakow, Poland.

For additional information about the conference, see here.

Tech Corner Article: New JSON-RPC interface

JSON-RPC is a "lightweight remote procedure call protocol similar to XML-RPC" (to quote from the website json-rpc.org/). #AllegroCL now has an API within Lisp to JSON-RPC. The module depends on the ST-JSON open source module. The API was releaased as a patch so Allegro CL must be updated before the module can be used.

See the JSON-PRC API documentation for further information and examples.

Franz Inc. named to KMWorld Magazine's 2016 "100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management"

As knowledge management evolves, so does their list of 100 Companies That Matter in KM. Featuring basic imaging technology when it was first published years ago, the list has expanded to include a galaxy of technologies and capabilities to meet the knowledge needs of a mobile workforce. Whether the designated companies specialize in collaborative, cloud or cognitive computing or a host of other categories, their solutions represent the best in innovation, creativity and functionality.

As the definition of knowledge management has changed over the years, so too has the list, including both familiar companies that have appeared multiple times and first-time recipients of the coveted designation. New or well known, all the companies offer solutions designed to help users and customers find what they need whenever and wherever they need it... and what they need is the ability to access, analyze and share crucial knowledge.

Read the full article here.

Bloor Group's Inside Analysis article - How Many Trips to the ER Does It Take?

The Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), announced last year, seeks to leverage big data to better understand the relationships between people, disease and other factors and harness that information to make individualized diagnoses and treatments. Although it's a top-down initiative, it's up to the health networks themselves to develop and implement the technology.

No relational database could manage a spread of structured data, unstructured data, images, clinical narratives, geolocation data, etc. Such enormous volumes of complex data seem destined for Hadoop or a data lake. However, the most feasible way to understand patterns and relationships buried in this data is by using semantic graph analytics.

One of the collaborations poised to capitalize on the PMI is Montefiore Medical Center and Franz Inc. They have teamed up (along with Intel, Cloudera, and Cisco) to create a Semantic Data Lake(SDL) for healthcare, helping to make precision medicine accurate and reliable. At the core of the SDL is Franz's flagship product,AllegroGraph, a semantic graph analytics product integrated with Hadoop.

Read the full article...

Recent Articles about Franz - #AllegroGraph

	TechTarget article - TechTarget article - Semantic graph database underpins healthcare data lake
	Computer Technology Review article - Cognitive Computing is Turning Precision Medicine into a Reality
	Information Management article - The Unparalleled Utility of Graph Databases

Follow us on Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube

Training Schedule

Lisp Programming Series Level I: Basic Lisp Essentials - June 1, 8, and 15

Lisp Programming Series Level II: Specialized Components of Lisp - July 6, 13, and 20

For additional information and to register, see here.