Title: TDB Command-line Utilities

## Contents

-   [Installation](#installation)
-   [Scripts](#scripts)
    -   [Script set up - bash scripts](#script-set-up-bash-scripts)
    -   [Script set up - Windows batch files](#script-set-up-windows-bash-files)
-   [Command line script arguments](#command-line-script-arguments)
    -   [Setting options from the command line](#setting-options-from-the-command-line)
-   [TDB Commands](#tdb-commands)
    -   [Store description](#store-description)
    -   [tdbloader](#tdbloader)
    -   [tdbloader2](#tdbloader2)
    -   [tdbquery](#tdbquery)
    -   [tdbdump](#tdbdump)
    -   [tdbstats](#tdbstats)


## Installation

From Apache Jena version `2.7.x` onwards, TDB is now installed as part of a single integrated Jena
package. There is no longer a need to install a separate TDB package to run the TDB command line
tools, or to use TDB in your Java programs. See the [downloads](/download/) page for details on getting the latest Jena
release.

## Scripts

From the location The directory `bin/` contains shell scripts to run the commands
from the command line. The scripts are bash scripts which should work
on Linux systems, Windows systems using [Cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/) and
Mac/OS systems. The directory `bat/` contains Windows batch files which
provide the same functionality for Windows systems that are not using
Cygwin.

### Script set up - bash scripts

Set the environment variable `JENAROOT` to the root of the the Jena
installation. E.g:

    export JENAROOT=/home/somebody/dev/apache-jena

or

    export JENAROOT=/usr/local/apache-jena


Then set the `PATH` to include the `bin` directory:

    PATH=$JENAROOT/bin:$PATH

This can be done in `.bashrc`, or its equivalent on Mac OS/X, to ensure that the environment
variables are always available.

### Script set up - Windows batch files

Setting environment variables in Windows is slightly involved. You can set them
each time you start a command prompt:

    SET JENAROOT=\Users\somebody\dev\apache-jena
    SET PATH=%PATH%;%JENAROOT\bin

or you can follow [this guide](http://searchsystemschannel.techtarget.com/feature/Setting-Windows-7-environment-variables)
or one like it to set the environment variables so that they are available every
time you launch the command prompt.

## Command line script arguments

Each command then has command-specific arguments described below.

All commands support `--help` to give details of named and
positional arguments.

There are two equivalent forms of named argument syntax:

    --arg=val

    --arg val

### Setting options from the command line

TDB has a number of
[configuration options](configuration.html)
which can be set from the command line using:

     --set tdb:symbol=value

Using tdb: is really a short hand for the URI prefix
http://jena.hpl.hp.com/TDB\# so the full URI form is

     --set http://jena.hpl.hp.com/TDB#symbol=value

## TDB Commands

### Store description

TDB commands use an assembler description for the persistent store

    --desc=assembler.ttl
    --tdb=assembler.ttl

or a direct reference to the directory with the index and node
files:

    --loc=DIRECTORY
    --location=DIRECTORY

The assembler description follow the form for a dataset given in
[TDB assembler description](assembler.html "TDB/Assembler") page.

If neither assembler file nor location is given, `--desc=tdb.ttl`
is assumed.

### `tdbloader`

Bulk loader and index builder. Performans bulk load operations more
efficiently than simply reading RDF into a TDB-back model.

### `tdbloader2`

Bulk loader and index builder. Faster than `tdbloader` but only works
on Linux and Mac OS/X since it relies on some Unix system utilities.

This bulk loader can only be used to create a database. It may
overwrite existing data. It only accepts the --loc argument and a
list of files to load.

### `tdbquery`

Invoke a SPARQL query on a store. Use `--time` for timing
information. The store is attached on each run of this command so
timing includes some overhead not present in a running system.

Details about query execution can be obtained -- see notes on the
[TDB Optimizer](optimizer.html#Investigating_what_is_going_on).

### `tdbdump`

Dump the store in
[N-Quads](http://sw.deri.org/2008/07/n-quads/)
format.

### tdbstats

Produce a statistics for the dataset. See the
[TDB Optimizer description.](optimizer.html#Statistics_Rule_File).