Overview

VIVO has many features and can display many kinds of data related to the scholarship of the individuals at your institution.  VIVO provides sample data which can demonstrate the features of VIVO, and help familiarize you with the formats VIVO uses to store its data.  The sample data includes a fictional university, fictional departments, fictional faculty members and collaborators, fictional publications and grants, memberships and other elements of scholarship common in VIVO.  The sample data does not include an example of every type of thing that can be stored in VIVO, nor does it contain many faculty.  It is intended to demonstrate the most common elements of VIVO.

Preparing Your VIVO

To use the sample data, and follow the examples here regarding the sample data, you will want your VIVO to contain only the sample data.  Do not add the sample data to your data.  VIVO uses data from a database you specify.  We will create a database for the sample data, and tell VIVO to use that database when loading and using the sample data.  At the end of this page, we will tell VIVO to use the database that you used when you installed VIVO.  In this way, your data, and the sample data will always be separate.

In the steps that follow, we assume that you have installed VIVO according to the installation instructions, and that MySQL and Tomcat are running.  If this is not the case, please complete the installation and test it, before attempting to use the instructions here.

To create a database for the sample data, and tell VIVO to use it, follow the steps below:

  1. Record the name of the database you used to install VIVO.  In the installation instructions, this is referred to as vitrodb, but you may have named it something else.  After you have finished with the sample data, you will follow steps to reset VIVO to use this database.
  2. Create a new database in MySQL

    $ mysql -u root -p
    Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
    Your MySQL connection id is 2
    Server version: 5.7.9 MySQL Community Server (GPL)
    Copyright (c) 2000, 2015, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
    Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
    affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
    owners.
    Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
    
    mysql> CREATE DATABASE sampledb CHARACTER SET utf8;
    mysql> GRANT ALL ON sampledb.* TO 'vitrodbUsername'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'vitrodbPassword';


  3. Edit the runtime.properties file to tell VIVO the name of the database it should use.  In this case sampledb.
  4. Restart Tomcat

On completing these steps, your VIVO will be using an "empty" database.  You may need to wait for VIVO to start the first time, as VIVO automatically loads data from files distributed with VIVO.  You may ned to refresh your browser.  You may need to wait will VIVO indexes the first time data.  It may take several minutes for VIVO to restart, load the first time data, and index it.  When VIVO has completed its work, and you have refreshed your browser, your home page should look like:

You are are now ready to load the sample data.

Loading the Sample Data

To load the sample data, follow the steps below.

  1. Log in to your VIVO as a site admin
  2. Goto to Site Admin / Add/Remove RDF Data
  3. Enter the address of the sample data, https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vivo-project/sample-data/master/sample-data.n3, select "add instance data," and set the file type to "N3."  See below
  4. Check to make sure you have the form filled out properly: 1) the URL for the sample data has been entered as shown; 2) "add instance" is selected; 3) "N3" is selected as the file type.  Press Submit.
  5. After a brief upload, you will see
  6. Navigate to your home page.  You should see
  7. That's it! Let's start exploring.

Exploring the Interface

Use the interface to search for terms.  You may wish to try "Chemistry" or "Derrida" or "Roberts".

Sign on as a site administrator and use the interface.  You will see edit controls that allow you to modify the data using the interface.

On the person's profile, click "Turn On" at the top of the page to turn on verbose property display.  This shows you the properties VIVO is using to store each piece of information on the page, and attributes assciated with each of the properties.

On a person's profile, click "Edit this individual".  You will be presented with an internal view providing information about the data being used to create the profile.

At the top of the display is a list of the datatype properties and their values to be edited.

Below that is a list of Object properties showing connections between the individual and other entities in VIVO.  Studying these connections can help you understand how VIVO stores data in a connected graph.

Click on "Edit this Individual" on the Individual Control Panel.

From this page you can edit or add values for any of the properties listed.

Resetting Your Database

When you are finished exploring the sample data, you will want to reset VIVO to use the database you used when installing VIVO.  You recorded the name of this database when following the steps above in Preparing Your Database.  To reset your database, follow the steps below:

  1. Shutdown Tomcat
  2. edit runtime.properties and change the name of the database from the name of the sample database to the name of the database you used to install VIVO.
  3. Start Tomcat

Now VIVO will be using the database you used when installing VIVO.  If you would like to use the sample data again, just repeat these steps, naming the sample data database as the one you would like to use.