David R Newman

Running a Sesame Server on AllegroGraph

AllegroGraph is a RDFstore (triplestore) application written by Franz Inc.. It comes in both Java and Lisp editions. I have been using the Lisp edition. Setting up a repository is fairly straightforward and there are instructions on how to do this at:

http://agraph.franz.com/allegrograph/doc/lisp/agraph-tutorial.html

I have had slightly more difficulty setting up a sesame server so that I can communicate with the repository remotely. A guide for the protocol is provided at:

http://agraph.franz.com/allegrograph/doc/java/http-protocol.html

but it doesn't explain expecially clearly how to set up the server and start using it. Below is a guide on how to acheive this:

  1. Start the alisp application provided as part of AllegroGraph.
  2. Type in the following commands one at a time:
    (require :agraph)
    (in-package :triple-store-user)
    (setf *synchronize-automatically* t)
    (make-sesame-server :start (list :port 8010))

Now you should have a sesame server up a running you need a client to connect to it. I decided to use the Zend Framework, which contains a http client library that can be used to be a client to interface with the sesame server, as follows:

  1. Download the latest version of the Zend Framework.
  2. Use the Zend Framework QuickStart to build up the framework. I suggest creating this in you own filespace.
  3. Create a symbolic link from a servable folder (e.g. /var/www/) to link to the public folder in the framework that you have built:
    ln -s /home/<username>/QuickStart/public/ zend
    This should allow you to access index.phtml from http://localhost/zend/.
  4. Copy index.phtml into the application/views/scripts/index/ directory of the Zend Framework directory structure.
  5. Now by going to http://localhost/zend/ it should be possible to load up a form interface entitled HTTP Test for AGraph Sesasme Server.
  6. This form can be used to perform commands from AllegroGraph's Sesame Server Protocol.
  7. The HTTP client provided by the Zend Framework as far as I can work out is not fully implemented so does not support sending a body or setting the Accept or Content-type values in the request header. I have modified library/Zend/Http/Client.php so that it can send this values in a request.

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Page written by David R Newman (drn[at]ecs.soton.ac.uk). Last updated June 27 2018 14:44:07.