http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/oerling/ Orri Erling's Weblog oerling@openlinksw.com oerling@openlinksw.com 2013-05-20T06:24:11Z Virtuoso Universal Server 06.04.3135 http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/images/vbloglogo.gif See the Lite: Embeddable/Background Virtuoso starts at 25MB http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/oerling/?date=2008-12-17#1502 2008-12-17T09:34:12Z 2008-12-17T12:03:43-05:00 <p>We have received many requests for an embeddable-scale <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com" id="link-id0xa5aa1b38">Virtuoso</a>. In response to this, we have added a Lite mode, where the initial size of a server process is a tiny fraction of what the initial size would be with default settings. With 2MB of disk cache buffers (ini file setting, <code>NumberOfBuffers = 256</code>), the process size stays under 30MB on 32-bit Linux.</p> <p>The value of this is that one can now have <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Resource_Description_Framework" id="link-id0x1db79ac8">RDF</a> and full text indexing on the desktop without running a Java VM or any other memory-intensive software. And of course, all of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL" id="link-id0xa923298">SQL</a> (transactions, stored procedures, etc.) is in the same embeddably-sized container.</p> <p>The Lite executable is a full Virtuoso executable; the Lite mode is controlled by a switch in the configuration file. The executable size is about 10MB for 32-bit Linux. A database created in the Lite mode will be converted into a fully-featured database (tables and indexes are added, among other things) if the server is started with the Lite setting &quot;off&quot;; functionality can be reverted to Lite mode, though it will now consume somewhat more memory, etc.</p> <p>Lite mode offers full SQL and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id0x1b388830">SPARQL</a>/SPARUL (via SPASQL), but disables all <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol" id="link-id0x1d56b618">HTTP</a>-based services (WebDAV, application hosting, etc.). Clients can still use all typical database access mechanisms (i.e., <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Open_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id0x1c5abc38">ODBC</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Java_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id0x1dade1f8">JDBC</a>, OLE-DB, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/ADO.NET" id="link-id0x25d8e0f0">ADO</a>.<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/.NET_Framework" id="link-id0x1d7a1a28">NET</a>, and XMLA) to connect, including the <a href="http://jena.sourceforge.net/" id="link-id0x1d929b98">Jena</a> and <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/sesame/" id="link-id0x1b7a9088">Sesame</a> frameworks for RDF. ODBC now offers full support of RDF <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id0xaf62aa0">data</a> types for <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/C%2B%2B" id="link-id0xa8784b0">C</a>-based clients. A Redland-compatible API also exists, for use with Redland v1.0.8 and later. </p> <p>Especially for embedded use, we now allow restricting the listener to be a Unix socket, which allows client connections only from the localhost.</p> <p>Shipping an embedded Virtuoso is easy. It just takes one executable and one configuration file. Performance is generally comparable to &quot;normal&quot; mode, except that Lite will be somewhat less scalable on multicore systems.</p> <p>The Lite mode will be included in the next Virtuoso 5 Open Source release.</p>