Duke 1.2

As of version 1.2, Duke has moved to Github. Many thanks to Yann Barraud for helping me convert the wiki from Google Code.

The main change in this version is the new, and much faster, blocking backends. Note that this version introduces API changes and changes to the XML configuration syntax that are not backwards compatible. Read on for details.

Other new features:

• Added longest common substring comparator.
• LuceneDatabase now uses fuzzy search by default (which is much slower).
• New default Record implementation, faster and uses less memory.
• Support for changing CSV value separator.
• Databases are now pluggable.
• Improved inference of links in LinkDatabase.

API changes:

• The ModifiableRecord interface was added.
• Two methods have been added to the Database interface.
• The DatabaseProperties class has been removed.
• All Database implementations have moved into the duke.databases package.
• The Configuration.createDatabase method is replaced by Configuration.getDatabase.
• The Link and LinkFileWriter interfaces have changed, and now require a confidence value.
• The TestFileUtils class is deprecated, and will be removed in the next release.

NOTE: The change to the XML configuration syntax concerns how databases are configured. The <param> elements inside the root element now have no effect, and the <path> element is no longer supported. Instead, the <database> element has been introduced. See the wiki for details.

NOTE: The link database schema has changed: the confidence column has been included. If you have an existing link database you need to add this column.

NOTE: The link file syntax has changed to be a proper CSV file and include the confidence.