In this post, I will be adding procedures required to set up necessary semantic softwares on Mac OS 10.10.3:

  • Setting OpenLink Virtuoso: For our purpose we use virtuoso as a triple store. Although, there are number of triple stores available but from my limited literature survey I found Virtuosos as fast, scalable and easy to set up. Steps involved from getting a copy of Virtuoso to its startup on Mac are as:
    1. Download a fresh copy of Virtuoso from link
    2. Unzip the copy at some suitable place
    3. Please read "README" file in the unzipped folder and ensure that you have all dependencies installed
    4. In this step we are going to change the default stack size, so in the same directory open binsrc/virtuoso/viunix.c in some text editor. In viunix.c, search for thread_initial and change its default size from 60000 to 80000. Save the file and exit
    5. Now open the "INSTALL" file in same unzipped folder. Read it carefully and follow the steps sequentially, i.e,  i) ./configure,  ii)make, iii) make check, and  iv) sudo make install
    6. Add location of virtuoso to PATH variable. There are various ways to do this, but here I will explain one of possible ways. Open. bash_profile file and add the following line to it "export PATH =$PATH:/usr/local/virtuoso-opensource/bin/". Save the file and exit.
    7. Once all of the above steps are done successfully, now it is to check whether Virtuoso is installed successfully. Therefore, move to location of virtuoso.ini file. This file is mostly located at usr/local/virtuoso-opensource/var/lib/virtuoso/db
    8. Start server with command: sudo virtuoso-t -f &. On my system, server starts with sudo virtuoso-t -f
    9. Open http://localhost:8890/conductor in web browser. 

NOTE: These steps are also available at link, but she has missed step # 4. This is the only reason I created a separate post for this.

  • Setting Jena Framework: This is a java based framework. This is mostly used framework within semantic community, suitable for playing with semantic technologies. To setup jena on your system follow these steps:
    1. Download a fresh copy of apache-jean from apache download centre located at link
    2. Please follow the steps of integration of apache-jena with Eclipse at link
    3. To get a clear understanding of how ontologies/models are handled in Jena look at the documents present at link
  • Creating Ontologies: Ontologies serve as one of the basic component in semantic technologies. Ontologies define the basic schema/structure/relationship of a particular domain. There are various tools available for building ontologies. I am using Protege, developed at Stanford university. Download a copy of it for your system, and give it a try by following some tutorials available online.