Help:Special:SemanticMediaWiki/Database installation and upgrade

This page describes the database installation and upgrade function accessible via special page "SemanticMediaWiki". It is located in its own "Database installation and upgrade" section and allows to setup and upgrade the storage backend for the semantic data.

A database installation or upgrade has to be done since Semantic MediaWiki requires some additional tables within MediaWiki's database in order to store the semantic data. This function ensures that the database is set up properly. The changes made in this step do not affect the rest of the MediaWiki database, and can easily be undone if desired. This function can be executed multiple times without doing any harm, but it is needed only once on installation and upgrade of Semantic MediaWiki, if a fixed property being created or if an extension to Semantic MediaWiki is added which also requires additional database tables to work like e.g. Semantic Extra Special Properties.

By default all users who are administrators (user group "sysop") or Semantic MediaWiki administrators (user group "smwadministrator") may use this feature. This feature can be disabled by removing the  constant from configuration parameter. See the linked help page for information on how this is done.

Usage
To initiate the setup or upgrade of the tables for holding the semantic data in the storage backend the button labelled "Initialize or upgrade tables" in the "Database installation and upgrade" section of the "SemanticMediaWiki" special page has to be clicked. Now a page displaying the functions execution progress will be shown. The successful completion of the process ends with showing the system message "The storage engine was setup successfully." Now one can return to special page "SemanticMediaWiki" by clicking on the link labelled "Administrative functions" at the top of the page. To avoid corrupted data in case of a failure of this function the wiki's system administrator must be informed to check for the cause and solving the issue.