Before you start

In this tutorial, you learn about UIMA type systems and their descriptors and how to create them in Eclipse. You also learn about Annotators and Annotations and Analysis Engines and their descriptors. Then find out how to access Analysis Engines and the Common Analysis Structure (CAS) using a Java™ application. Finally, you learn about the CAS Visual Debugger.

About this series

This series chronicles the creation of a UIMA component that can be accessed as a Web service. Part 1 describes the actual creation of the component using Eclipse, and Part 2 converts the component into a Web service and discusses the creation of a client to use that component.

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About this tutorial

This tutorial is for developers who may or may not have a general idea of the concepts behind UIMA, but who are ready to start building an actual application. Using Eclipse plug-ins and other tools included as part of a UIMA SDK, you create a UIMA type system, Annotator, and Analysis Engine, and you write an application that ties them all together.

You build an application for searching unstructured text files for specific patterns of text. Your application uses this information to create a common analysis structure, which you then analyze using a Java application. In the course of all this, you learn to do the following:

• Install the UIMA SDK for Eclipse
• Create a type system
• Generate Java classes from the type system
• Create an Annotator
• Create an Analysis Engine descriptor
• Use UIMA tools such as the CAS Visual Debugger from within Eclipse
• Create an application that programmatically calls a UIMA Analysis Engine
• Programmatically access UIMA analysis data

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Prerequisites

In order to make use of this tutorial, you should have a general familiarity with working in the Eclipse IDE, but steps directly related to the UIMA tools will be discussed in detail. You should also be familiar with Java programming, but all code will be discussed in sufficient detail so that beginning Java programmers should be able to follow along.

Familiarity with the UIMA in general would be helpful, but is not required. Important UIMA concepts will be covered in the tutorial.

To follow along with this tutorial, you should have the following tools installed and tested prior to beginning:

• Java 2 Standard Edition SDK. Before you can even install Eclipse, you need to have a working installation of the Java SDK. You can download version 1.4.x or higher from the following location: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp.
• The Eclipse IDE. The UIMA SDK works with both versions 2 and 3 of the Eclipse development environment, but the steps in this tutorial assume that you are using version 3.1.1. Later versions should also work, although specific steps might change slightly. You can download Eclipse from the following location: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/index.php.
• The UIMA SDK. The UIMA SDK comes in several different varieties, with installers for both Windows and UNIX. This tutorial assumes that you have downloaded the platform-independent zip file, available at http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/uima/download, which provides specific installation instructions.

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• What is UIMA?
• The project
• Prepare the environment
• Create the type description
• Create the Annotator
• Create the Analysis Engine descriptor
• Test the Analysis Engine
• Create an application
• Summary
• Resources
• About the author

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