Connecting to remote locations and data sources

You can connect to remote locations and data sources from your instance of GraphDB. Locations represent individual servers or endpoints which store data. They can be other GraphDB instances or remote endpoints, and can be attached, edited, and detached.

Remote locations are mainly used for:

• Accessing remote GraphDB repositories from the same Workbench

• Accessing secured remote repositories via SPARQL federation

The interface for attaching to remote locations can be opened by navigating to Setup ‣ Repositories and clicking the Attach remote location button. This will bring up the interface for attaching to a remote locations.

Remote GraphDB instance	Provide the URL address of the GraphDB instance you want to attach. Choose an authentication method: None: The security of the remote location is disabled, and no authentication is needed. Basic authentication: The security of the remote location has basic authentication enabled (default setting). Requires a username and a password. Encrypt password: If checked, the password used for basic authentication will be saved encrypted in the settings.js file in the GraphDB directory. However, encrypted passwords are not compatible with GraphDB versions lower than GraphDB 11.4. Signature: Uses the token secret, which must be the same on both GraphDB instances. For more information on configuring the token secret, see the GDB authentication section of the Access Control documentation. Click on Attach.
Ontopic SPARQL endpoint	Provide the URL address of the Ontopic SPARQL endpoint you want to attach. Provide ClientID and Secret for authentication purposes. Encrypt password: If checked, the secret used for basic authentication will be saved encrypted in the settings.js file in the GraphDB directory. However, encrypted secrets are not compatible with GraphDB versions lower than GraphDB 11.4. Click on Attach.
SPARQL endpoint	Provide the URL address of the SPARQL endpoint you want to attach. Provide Username and Password for authentication. Encrypt password: If checked, the password used for basic authentication will be saved encrypted in the settings.js file in the GraphDB directory. However, encrypted passwords are not compatible with GraphDB versions lower than GraphDB 11.4. Click on Attach.

Attached remote locations appear in your list of repositories and data sources separately from the list of local repositories — Remote GraphDB instances lists all available repositories on attached remote GraphDB instances, while Remote SPARQL endpoints lists both attached SPARQL endpoints and attached Ontopic SPARQL endpoints.

Once a remote location has been attached, it can also be removed.

• For GraphDB locations, click the delete icon in the upper-right corner of the list of repositories available on that location.

• For remote SPARQL and Ontopic SPARQL endpoints, click the delete icon next to the endpoint you want to remove.

Note

The delete icon won’t appear unless you have Administrator access to that remote location.

To change the credentials of an attached remote location, click on the edit icon.

Tip

To check the state of your current license, click the Repository screen’s key icon that has the tooltip “View or update license for these repositories”.

Note

You can connect to a remote location over HTTPS as well. To do so:

1. Enable HTTPS on the remote host.

2. Set the correct Location URL, for example https://localhost:8083.

3. If the certificate of the remote host is self-signed, you should add it to your JVM’s Truststore. Read more about using Truststores with GraphDB in the Use self-signed certificates section of the documentation’s Encryption page.

Creating a repository on an attached remote GraphDB location

If you have proper write permissions for an attached remote GraphDB instance, you can create a repository on that instance the same way you create a local one. From Setup ‣ Repositories ‣ Create new repository you can choose the remote location from the Location field.