Chapter 1. Getting Started

Table of Contents

Installing the Development Environment
Running an Example Annotator
A Slightly More Complex Annotator
Summary

This tutorial explains how to install the System Text Development Environment, as well as how to run a simple AQL annotator over a collection of email messages.

Installing the Development Environment

The tutorials in this book rely on the System Text Development Environment. This software can be downloaded from IBM's AlphaWorks site; just search for "System Text" at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/.

The Development Environment comes packaged inside a TAR (for Linux) or ZIP (for Windows) archive. As long as you have a recent web browser installed, this archive should include everything you need to run the Development Environment. After unpacking the System Text archive, all you need to do is start the server and open a web browser. See below for detailed instructions.

Once you have downloaded the appropriate TAR or ZIP file, uncompress the Development Environment onto your computer's hard drive, and run the Development Environment startup script. For Linux, the startup script will be located at SystemText-[version]/bin/startserver.sh. For Windows, the startup script will be located at SystemText-[version]/bin/startserver.bat.

When you run the startserver script, you should see output similar to the following:

[freiss@q]:~/Desktop/SystemText-0.2.0$ ./bin/startserver.sh 
Sep 22, 2008 11:31:17 AM org.mortbay.util.FileResource <clinit>
INFO: Checking Resource aliases
Sep 22, 2008 11:31:17 AM org.mortbay.http.HttpServer doStart
INFO: Version Jetty/5.1.10
Sep 22, 2008 11:31:17 AM org.mortbay.util.Container start
INFO: Started org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler@69746974
Sep 22, 2008 11:31:17 AM org.mortbay.util.Container start
INFO: Started ServletHttpContext[/aql,/aql]
Sep 22, 2008 11:31:17 AM org.mortbay.http.SocketListener start
INFO: Started SocketListener on 0.0.0.0:8083
Sep 22, 2008 11:31:17 AM org.mortbay.util.Container start
INFO: Started org.mortbay.jetty.Server@3520352

This output indicates that the Development Environment's server component is up and running. At this point, you should be able to start the Development Environment by pointing your web browser at the address http://localhost:8083/aql

You should see something like this:

Congratulations! You can now run the System Text Development Environment.