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DALIA's backend triplestore powered by Apache Jena Fuseki

Using the Docker images

Reusable Docker images are provided via GitLab's container registry.

Maintained image tags

  • latest: built from the main branch; used in DALIA's production system
  • dev: build from the dev branch; used in DALIA's staging system

Start a Fuseki instance

docker run --rm -it -p 3030:3030 -v ${PWD}/data:/database --name fuseki registry.git.rwth-aachen.de/dalia/backend/fuseki:latest

creates and starts a Docker container and exposes Fuseki's HTTP interface on the Docker host via port 3030 (http://localhost:3030). Fuseki's database directory is mounted as volume under ./data.

Interfaces

Volume: Fuseki's database directory

In the container Fuseki's database directory including its configuration is located at /database. This directory should be mounted as volume to persist data beyond the life cycle of the container.

Fuseki's HTTP interface

Fuseki exposes its administration protocol and the RDF dataset endpoints via HTTP on port 3030. The RDF dataset endpoints typically support SPARQL queries, SPARQL/Update (SPARUL) and the Graph Store HTTP Protocol (GSP).

Logging

Log messages are written exclusively through the stdout and stderr output streams, which are passed to Docker's logging system.

RDF datasets

Notes on text indexing

The datasets are configured to support Jena's full text search via Lucene indices. Considering triples that build an RDF graph, the string literal objects for certain predicates are indexed and made available for a text search. This means there is a text index for each predicate. Moreover, different indices can be combined at query time via a property list.

dalia dataset

This dataset contains the DALIA knowledge graph with information on learning resources and communities. It is initialized with RDF data from the /dalia_data directory with data initially provided by the download-dalia-data-job CI job before building the Docker image.

Endpoints:

  • /dalia/: SPARQL, SPARUL and GSP (read+write)
  • /dalia/query: SPARQL
  • /dalia/sparql: SPARQL
  • /dalia/get: GSP (read)
  • /dalia/update: SPARUL
  • /dalia/data: GSP (read+write)

Text indexing:

  • indexed predicates and index names:
Predicate Index name Use
dcterms:title dctermsTitle learning resource title, community title
dcterms:description dctermsDescription learning resource description, community description
fabio:hasSubtitle fabioHasSubtitle learning resource subtitle
schema:keywords schemaKeywords learning resource keywords
schema:name schemaName organization author name
schema:familyName schemaFamilyName person author name
schema:givenName schemaGivenName person author name
  • combined indices (property lists):
    • dt:learningResourceTexts: dcterms:title, dcterms:description, fabio:hasSubtitle, schema:keywords, schema:name, schema:familyName, schema:givenName
    • dt:communityTexts: dcterms:title, dcterms:description
    • namespace dt: http://dalia.education/text#

ontologies dataset

This read-only dataset contains third-party ontologies and vocabularies that the items in the dalia dataset refer to. It is initialized with RDF data from the /ontologies directory each time the Docker container starts.

Loaded ontologies and vocabularies:

Endpoints:

  • /ontologies/: SPARQL and GSP (read)
  • /ontologies/query: SPARQL
  • /ontologies/sparql: SPARQL
  • /ontologies/get: GSP (read)

Text indexing:

  • indexed predicates and index names:
Predicate Index name Use
rdfs:label rdfsLabel labels
skos-last-call:prefLabel1 skosLastCallPrefLabel labels of languages (Lexvo)
spdx:licenseId spdxLicenseId SPDX: license ID
spdx:name spdxName SPDX: license full name
spdx:licenseText spdxLicenseText SPDX: license text

1 Namespace skos-last-call is http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos#. It is different from the standard SKOS namespace.

  • combined indices (property lists):
    • dt:spdxLicensesTexts: spdx:licenseId, spdx:name, spdx:licenseText
    • namespace dt: http://dalia.education/text#

Maintenance tasks

These tasks should be triggered frequently, for instance via cron jobs. The maintenance scripts should be called via docker exec.

Dataset backup

Example:

docker exec fuseki /scripts/backup.py dalia

creates a backup of the dalia dataset. The backup file in the format dalia_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.nq.gz can be found in /database/backups. It is a gzipped N-Quads file, which can be immediately loaded into a Fuseki dataset.

Dataset compaction

Apache Jena's TDB2 datasets grow in size due to update operations (see TDB FAQs), which makes compaction necessary.

Example:

docker exec fuseki /scripts/compact_dalia.sh

starts compaction of the dalia dataset.