Imagine you could easily install and configure a 3D geodatabase for virtual 3D city models with a single command in virtually any runtime environment. Exactly this is now possible with the new Docker Images for the 3DCityDB!
3DCityDB is the free 3D geodatabase developed by the Chair of Geoinformatics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in cooperation with the development partners virtualCitySYSTEMS GmbH and MOSS Computer Grafik-Systeme GmbH for the storage, management, analysis and visualization of 3D city models according to the CityGML standard (Homepage www.3dcitydb.org).
What is Docker?
Docker is a widely used virtualization technology that allows you to pack an application with all its required resources into a standardized unit - the Docker Container. Software encapsulated in this way can be run on Linux, Windows, macOS and most cloud services without any further customization. Docker containers are lightweight compared to traditional virtualization environments where an entire operating system is emulated, as they contain only the application and all the tools, program libraries and files it requires.
Get and use the 3DcityDB Docker image
The docker container for the 3DCityDB is based on the open source database system PostgreSQL and the PostGIS extension for spatial data. The container is freely available via DockerHub and can be downloaded and used immediately. Detailed documentation and source code are available on the GitHub project page. All you need is a Docker installation on your system. The time-consuming installation of a database server, its configuration, the installation of a database extension for spatial data, and the setup of the 3DCityDB data model are a thing of the past.