Why do we need Fuseki Server?

Question

I am developing an application, which is using triple store (Jena TDB). It is clealy mentioned that TDB Supports SPARQL update and Query. Also, I understood that Fuseki is SPARQL server, that supports Update and Query as well. I do not find answer do the following questions:

1. If TDB supports SPARQL query and update, then why we need Fuseki?
2. Can I store my data in TDB and then access it in my application without using Fuseki?

Any response from your side will be valuable.

Answer 1

To expand on the comments you already received

TDB is an in-memory database backed by persistent disk storage which runs within a JVM and is accessible only within that JVM. TDB stores can only be accessed by a single JVM at a time (and TDB will enforce this restriction) so you cannot use TDB on its own if you need to share data between multiple JVMs

Fuseki is a web server that implements the SPARQL Protocol which is a standard way to expose a RDF database for querying/updating via HTTP. TDB is the database used by default underneath Fuseki though Fuseki can be configured on top of other RDF databases if desired.

Since Fuseki runs in a single JVM it can be used to share access to a TDB database with multiple applications because those applications access Fuseki via HTTP and Fuseki handles all access to the TDB database within its JVM. Additionally since the SPARQL Protocol is a standard you can use Fuseki to allow non-JVM applications to access your TDB database since they simply interact with Fuseki via the protocol and don't need to know how to interact with TDB directly.

To summarise:

• If you only ever need to have one application access a TDB database then you can use TDB directly
• If you need to have multiple applications (or non-JVM) applications access a TDB database then use Fuseki over TDB