Detailed installation and use of virtuoso database under Linux system

I've been researching some things about linked data recently and needed to use an rdf database, so I came into contact with the virtuoso database. There are actually not many pitfalls in the installation. I have installed it once on Windows 10 before. This time I will install it on Ubuntu 18.04. The installation process for other Linux distributions is similar.

Download and use of virtuoso database

The open source version of the virtuoso database can be downloaded from sourceforge. I am using version 7.25. It is recommended to download the compiled generic version (the one marked in red in the download image). I encountered the problem that the openssl version does not support the version that needs to be compiled.

After downloading, unzip it to /usr/local and add the following environment variables. This allows you to start the virtuoso database service directly in the terminal without having to cd to the vituoso bin directory or add the path before starting it, which is more convenient. Edit the profile file in /etc, add export VIRTUOSO_HOME=/usr/local/virtuoso-opensource to the last line, and then add the virtuoso path ${VIRTUOSO_HOME}/bin to PATH. The paths in PATH are separated by colons. My environment variables are set as follows:

Reboot after setting the environment variables. Rename virtuoso.ini.sample in the database folder under virtuoso-openlink to virtuoso.ini. Then start the terminal, cd to the database directory, and enter virtuoso -t -fd to start the service. Enter http://localhost:8890 in the browser to enter the 8890 port web page to open its initial page. Click conductor and enter the user name and password (both are dba) to enter the database service page.

After clicking linkedata, click Quad Store Upload to load the rdf data, where FIle is the rdf data in ttl format or xml format that you need to upload (Virtuoso supports multiple formats of rdf data, not just these two). The Named Graph IRI needs to be set by you. As a test we will change it to http://localhost:8890/test. Click Upload to complete uploading the data.

Then we open Graphs and we can see the Named Graph IRI we just created.

Then we click on SPARQL to perform sparql search. Note that the Default Graph IRI needs to be set to the http://localhost:8890/test you just created.

Use of isql

Virtuoso database can use the database command management tool ISQL. Open the terminal and enter isql 1111 dba dba to enter isql. However, please note that Virtuoso's ISQL conflicts with the existing unixODBC ISQL in the system (the error message [ISQL]ERROR: Could not SQLConnect will appear), so you need to rename the isql in the bin directory of virtuoso. I renamed it to isql-v, so that you can enter isql by entering isql-v 1111 dba dba in the terminal.

Summarize

I am not very familiar with Virtuoso, and the official documentation is not very friendly. The research on linked data in China is not that popular and related resources are not easy to find. I will add more information about the rest of the Virtuoso database when I encounter them. If you have any questions during installation and use, you can ask them in the comments.