I would like to formally announce that DSpace 6.0 is now available!  DSpace 6 provides significant API enhancements and new features to the DSpace platform.

• DSpace 6.0 can be downloaded immediately from: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/releases/tag/dspace-6.0
• 6.0 Release notes are available at: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Release+Notes
• In addition, you are welcome to try out DSpace 6 on http://demo.dspace.org/ and continue to provide feedback on this major release.

DSpace 6 features an enhanced configuration system, enhanced file storage plugins, and new quality control / healthcheck reporting features (via REST API and via email).  In addition, DSpace 6 has an eye on the future, with a major Java API refactor that adds support for both UUIDs and Hibernate in our database layer.  Like its predecessor, DSpace 6 continues to strive to simplify your upgrade process by automatically updating your database to 6.x compatibility (from any prior DSpace version).

ENHANCED CONFIGURATION

In DSpace 6, most configurations (those in *.cfg files) automatically reload themselves. This means you no longer need to restart your webserver every time you wish to modify a backend configuration. 

In addition, a new "local.cfg" file has been added to the codebase. This local.cfg gives you the power to override any configuration (from any *.cfg file) by simply copying it into your custom local.cfg file. This means you no longer need to manage all your configurations in separate files.  Instead, you can simply copy all your customizations into your local.cfg, and easily take them with you in future upgrades.

More information on this feature may be found at https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Configuration+Reference and in the Release Notes.

ENHANCED FILE STORAGE

In DSpace 6, the file (bitstream) storage plugins have received a major refactor, including support for Amazon S3 file storage.  Additional file storage plugins may be built in the future (or you can build your own).  More information on this feature is available athttps://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Storage+Layer#StorageLayer-ConfiguringtheBitstreamStore

HEALTHCHECKS AND QUALITY CONTROL

Want to receive a regular email report of how large your DSpace is? Want to be notified of oddities in your logs (exceptions/warnings) before they cause more severe issues?  Then take a look at the new, configurable email healthcheck reports that come with DSpace 6. More information is available at https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Healthcheck+reports

Ever wish you could dig deeper into your site's metadata or files (bitstreams) without having to write database (SQL) queries?  What if you could find metadata or file oddities before your users reported them?  The DSpace 6 REST API now features a Quality Control reporting interface, along with a sample (HTML) client user interface.  More information on this feature is available at https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/REST+Based+Quality+Control+Reports  The sample HTML clients can be tried out on our demo site (Sample Query client: https://demo.dspace.org/rest/static/reports/query.html and Sample Quality Control client: https://demo.dspace.org/rest/static/reports/index.html). 

REFACTORED JAVA API

While obviously not a customer-facing feature, DSpace 6 includes a major refactor to the underlying Java API to make it more secure, easier to maintain and to help better support future roadmap goals.  Key among these changes is the addition of Hibernate (http://hibernate.org/) to manage database logic and simplify our support of both PostgreSQL and Oracle backends.  We've also added UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) support for all objects. Finally, the Java API itself has been modularized into three distinct layers, which provide business logic ("Service" layer),  database access (or DAO) layer, and individual object access layer (setters/getters for each object).

For most users, these Java API changes (and necessary database upgrades) will be seamless.  However, if you have made major site customizations (involving adding new or custom Java API calls), you will need to update your local code to support the new 6.x Java API. Much more information on the extent of these changes is available at https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+Service+based+api

OVERVIEW OF ALL NEW FEATURES AND IMPROVEMENTS IN 6.0 

• Java API refactor, featuring Hibernate and UUIDs
• Enhanced (reloadable) configuration system, featuring a new local.cfg configuration file
• Enhanced file storage plugins, featuring support for Amazon S3
• Configurable site healthchecks via email
• XMLUI framework for metadata import from external sources, featuring support for PubMed imports
• XMLUI export of search results to CSV (for batch editing)
• XMLUI extensible administrative control panel
• REST API Quality Control Reports, along with sample HTML clients and CSV export (for batch editing)
• REST API support for additional authentication methods (e.g. LDAP, etc)
• All searches default to boolean AND.
• Enhanced indexing for searches (Excel is now searchable, as well as right-to-left text in PDFs)
• OAI-PMH adds compliance for OpenAIRE 3.0 guidelines for literature repositories

For a list of all new features in DSpace 6, please see the Release Notes:  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Release+Notes

DOCUMENTATION

The DSpace 6.0 Documentation is available online at https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/
Upgrade instructions (for any previous release of DSpace) are available at: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Upgrading+DSpace

6.0 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The DSpace application would not exist without the hard work and support of the community. Thank you to the many developers who have worked very hard to deliver all the new features and improvements. Also thanks to the users who provided input and feedback on the development, as well those who participated in the  testathons. 

We especially would like to thank the 6.0 Release Team, which consisted of Pascal-Nicolas Becker (Technische Universität Berlin / The Library Code), Tim Donohue (DuraSpace), Kevin Van de Velde (Atmire), and numerous other Committers who volunteered their time.

A detailed listing of all known people/institutions who contributed directly to DSpace 6.0 is available in the Release Notes. If you contributed and were accidentally not listed, please let us know so that we can correct it!  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Release+Notes

For DSpace 6.0, we had a total of 73 individuals contributed code, bug reports, and bug fixes. A big thanks goes out to everyone who participated. We hope you'll continue to be a valuable addition to the DSpace community for the next release and beyond!

As always, we are happy to hear back from the community about DSpace. Please let us know what you think of 6.0!