CityGML software development

One important bug has been reported (thanks to user Michal Kubis for his feedback and suggestions!) and fixed in the last days for Importer/Exporter 1.5 (for both Oracle and PostgreSQL/PostGIS versions). It affects the exact location/rotation values (<heading>) of some models in KML/COLLADA exports when displayed as COLLADA. KML/COLLADA exports displayed as footprint, extruded or geometry are not affected. Even many exports displayed as COLLADA work fine without the fix, so if you did not notice the problem so far you will probably not need it.

It requires some more testing before we can publish a bug fix release. In order to benefit from the latest fixes in the meantime, please follow the development in trunk or the postgis branch of our source code repository. In order to do so, you need a Subversion client installed on your machine (e.g., TortoiseSVN on Windows). Simply create a working copy of the source code using the following shell command (or a GUI equivalent) for the Oracle version:

svn checkout http://opportunity.bv.tu-berlin.de/svn/3dcitydb-imp-exp/trunk

or

svn checkout http://opportunity.bv.tu-berlin.de/svn/3dcitydb-imp-exp/branches/postgis

for PostgreSQL/PostGIS. It depends on what version you are interested in.

In order to update an existing working copy and to integrate the latest developments, issue the following command in the root folder of your working copy:

svn update

After having checked out or updated the project, you can build an executable version of the Importer/Exporter from the sources using the Ant script build.xml which is located in the root folder. This requires that the Ant binaries are available on your computer (get a copy here). All you have to do is open a shell, change to the root folder of the project, and run the command:

ant

This will create a subfolder named "3dcitydb-impexp-1.5" or "3dcitydb-impexp-1.5-postgis" which contains the starter scripts to run the Importer/Exporter. If you want to build a universal installer instead then just use the command:

ant generate_setup

You will find the executable jar file of the universal installer in the subfolder "3dcitydb-impexp-1.5-setup" or "3dcitydb-impexp-1.5-postgis-setup" afterwards.

If you have also found a bug, please tell us by creating a new bug report on the New Issue site (you have to login first - get a user account here).

C U,
Javier

The 3D City Database Importer/Exporter version 1.5.0 (for Oracle and PostGIS) has been released today and is available for download from the Files section.

The main new addition in this release is the enhancement of the KML/COLLADA export facilites to any CityGML Top-Level features (CityFurniture, LandUse, Transportation, etc.). Until now KML/COLLADA export support was limited to Buildings. This release extends that coverage to all other feature types, allowing different and independent Rendering and Balloon settings for each top-level category.

In addition, the 1.5.0 release includes some other improvements summarized in the following list:

• KML/COLLADA exports comprising all top-level feature types
• Balloon template enhancement through SPECIAL_KEYWORDS for data that has to be preprocessed before KML/COLLADA export
• Greatly improved performance of bounding box filters in the PostGIS version
• Lossless storage and export of address data
• Support for point and line geometries of GenericCityObjects

See the [[Changelog]] for more details.

The 3D City Database version remains unchanged for this release (2.0.6). It is a mandatory dependency of the Importer/Exporter version 1.4.0 and 1.5.0. Existing 3D City Database instances (version 2.0.5 or below) have to be upgraded to version 2.0.6 in order to make use of the new features and improvements. An upgrade script is shipped with the release. Please refer to the documentation addendum provided in the Documents section which includes a comprehensive guideline of the upgrade procedure.

The new Importer/Exporter version 1.5.0 can also be downloaded from the internet portal for the 3D City Database www.3dcitydb.net, there you can find more information on the database and our tools as well as demonstration datasets.

In answer to a feature request submitted through citygml4j's issue tracker (find the request here), I have published citygml4j 2.0ea as a Maven artifact today. I hope this will help all Maven users who want to develop CityGML-aware software with citygml4j.

The citygml4j artifact has already been synced with the central Maven repository (see here) and hence is ready to be used. I will deploy artifacts for the previous versions of citygml4j in the next days.

Note that the 2.0ea artifact requires Java 6 or higher due to JAXB not supporting Java 5 since version 2.2.5 anymore.

Have fun :-)
Claus

The 3D City Database version 2.0.6-postgis has been released today and is available for download from the Files section.

We are proud to announce the first officially released version of the 3D City Database v2.0 for PostgreSQL/PostGIS.
Since the release of the beta-version in mid July we have received several bug reports from beta-testers. Thank you all for the valuable feedback!

All reported bugs were analyzed and fixed. This new release has been greatly enhanced in terms of stability and robustness. We have also improved the creation of the database schema by providing an additional function that checks the user input for the spatial reference identifier (SRID) and prevents a corrupted setup of the 3D City Database.

See the Changelog for more details.

An introduction to the PostGIS port is given in a tutorial document which can be downloaded from the Documents section. This introduction also contains a how-to for setting up the 3D City Database on PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Additional documents provide detailed insights on the conversion of Oracle-specific PL/SQL scripts and Java classes to PostgreSQL/PostGIS. For general guidance and instructions regarding the 3D City Database and the Importer/Exporter tool, please refer to the 3D City Database documentation and the recent addendum to be found here.

The 3D City Database version 2.0.6-postgis is a mandatory dependency of the Importer/Exporter version 1.4.0-postgis.

The 3D City Database Importer/Exporter version 1.4.0-postgis has been released today and is available
for download from the Files section.

We are proud to announce that this is the first officially released version of the Importer/Exporter tool supporting PostgreSQL/PostGIS.

Since the release of the beta-version in mid July we have received several bug reports from beta-testers. Thank you all for the valuable feedback! All reported bugs were analyzed and fixed. This new release has been greatly enhanced in terms of stability and robustness.

An introduction to the PostGIS port is given in a tutorial document which can be downloaded from the Documents section. This introduction also contains a how-to for setting up the 3D City Database on PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Additional documents provide detailed insights on the conversion of Oracle-specific PL/SQL scripts and Java classes to PostgreSQL/PostGIS. For general guidance and instructions regarding the 3D City Database and the Importer/Exporter tool, please refer to the 3D City Database documentation and the recent addendum to be found here.

We are already planning to merge both the Oracle and PostGIS version into one software but for the nearer future
the tools will be developed in parallel.

See the Changelog for more details.

We have received several bug reports for the PostgreSQL/PostGIS port of the Importer/Exporter in the recent days. Thanks to all beta testers for providing feedback which helps us to improve the software. If you have also found a bug, please tell us by creating a new bug report on the New Issue site (you have to login first - get a user account here).

Some of the bugs have already been fixed, and we are currently dealing with the open issues. It requires some more testing before we can publish a bug fix release. In order to benefit from the latest fixes in the meantime, please follow the development in the postgis branch of our source code repository. In order to do so, you need a Subversion client installed on your machine (e.g., TortoiseSVN on Windows). Simply create a working copy of the source code using the following shell command (or a GUI equivalent):

svn checkout http://opportunity.bv.tu-berlin.de/svn/3dcitydb-imp-exp/branches/postgis

In order to update an exising working copy and to integrate the latest developments, issue the following command in the root folder of your working copy:

svn update

After having checked out or updated the project, you can build an executable version of the Importer/Exporter from the sources using the Ant script build.xml which is located in the root folder. This requires that the Ant binaries are available on your computer (get a copy here). All you have to do is open a shell, change to the root folder of the project, and run the command:

ant

This will create a subfolder named "3dcitydb-impexp-1.4-postgis-beta" which contains the starter scripts to run the Importer/Exporter. If you want to build a universaler installer instead then just use the command:

ant generate_setup

You will find the executable jar file of the universal installer in the subfolder "3dcitydb-impexp-1.4-postgis-beta-setup" afterwards.

Have fun,
Claus

citygml4j 2.0ea has been released today and is available for download from the Files section.

This is an early access release of the next major version 2.0 of citygml4j.
As announced two months ago, its most notable new feature is the full support for CityGML 2.0.
Further additions and changes include:

• Read-only support for CityGML 0.4.0 (full support has been discontinued)
• Added filtered CityGML reader
• Added support for <gml:MultiGeometry>
• CityGML XML chunks can now be accessed directly from readers before unmarshalling
• Updated all example programs shipped with the library
• Updated to GML 3.1.1.2 (due to OGC Xlink Policy)
• Updated to JAXB 2.2.5-2
• Incorporated JAMA 1.0.2 library for matrix calculations
• Minor bug fixes

Check the Changelog for more details.

Unfortunately, I have not yet found the time to prepare more detailed release notes or code snippets in the Wiki as for previous releases. But I did not want to defer the pre-release any longer. The download package comes with a range of sample programs. I have updated all of them and added some new examples. So you can learn about the new features and changes by simply reviewing their source code. Each example provides its own Ant build script which allows you to easily run the program (note that some of the Ant scripts even have more than one run target).

• samples/converting_citygml
  Demonstrates upgrading/downgrading a CityGML instance document between CityGML versions 2.0 and 1.0
• samples/reading_citygml/citygml_v040_reader
  Illustrates the read-only support for CityGML 0.4.0 instance documents which are internally mapped onto CityGML 1.0.0
• samples/reading_citygml/filtered_reader
  CityGML readers can be customized to only process specific CityGML feature types and to skip the rest
• samples/reading_citygml/multithreaded_reader
  When reading CityGML chunk-wise, the chunks can be fed to several threads before unmarshalling in order to speed up processing

The support for CityGML 2.0 required some minor changes to the citygml4j API. Thus, if you replace the citygml4j.jar library file in exisiting projects with the latest version 2.0ea, you will most likely run into compile errors. The following list provides the most important reasons.

• Changes to the enumeration of CityGML elements in CityGMLClass
  In CityGML 2.0, some feature types share the same name across CityGML modules. For example, there exists a WallSurface feature in the Building, Bridge, and Tunnel modules (in fact, all boundary surfaces share the same name). In order to ensure unique values in the CityGMLClass enumeration, some of the entries had to be renamed correspondingly. Simply update to the new values. For example, WALL_SURFACE needs to be replaced with BUILDING_WALL_SURFACE.
• Interface layer removed
  The citygml4j object model is split into interfaces and implementation classes in citygml4j 1.0. Since there has only been a single implementation of the interfaces, this separation has been resolved. In citygml4j 2.0ea, all object classes are located in org.citygml4j.model and share the same name as the interfaces in version 1.0. If you have not explicitly used the implementation classes from the package org.citygml4j.impl in your code, then you do not have to adapt any import statements.
• CityGML factories removed
  Due to the above change, the factories for creating instances of the object classes became obsolete and have been deleted. Every create method has been replaced by a constructor of the corresponding object class. For example, the following citygml4j 1.0 snippet
  

  1 CityGMLFactory citygml = new CityGMLFactory();
  2 ...
  3 Building building = citygml.createBuilding();
  

  can be easily rewritten as
  

  1 Building building = new Building();
  

Since this is an early access release, your feedback is required and desired. Please report any bugs or defects through the issue tracker on this site.
Any other discussions or questions are welcome in the Forums section.

Have fun :-)
Claus

The 3D City Database version 2.0.6-postgis-beta has been released today and is available for download from the Files section.

We are proud to announce that this is the first version of the 3D City Database v2.0 for PostgreSQL/PostGIS. It supports PostGIS 2.0 and takes advantage of its new raster data type, typemod definition of geometric columns and their multidimensional GiST indexing. The 3D City Database as well as the Importer/Exporter tool were ported from the Oracle version and support all features except for the Oracle workspace management.

An introduction to the PostGIS port is given in a tutorial document which can be downloaded from the Documents section. This introduction also contains a how-to for setting up the 3D City Database on PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Additional documents provide detailed insights on the conversion of Oracle-specific PL/SQL scripts and Java classes to PostgreSQL/PostGIS. For general guidance and instructions regarding the 3D City Database and the Importer/Exporter tool, please refer to the 3D City Database documentation and the recent addendum to be found here.

Please note that this release is still a beta version. Even though it was tested thoroughly with various datasets of different size and content we cannot guarantee that no errors will occur during imports and exports. It is strongly recommended running the PostGIS port in a dedicated testing environment first.

See the Changelog for more details.

The 3D City Database version 2.0.6-postgis-beta is a mandatory dependency of the Importer/Exporter version 1.4.0-postgis-beta.

The 3D City Database Importer/Exporter version 1.4.0-postgis-beta has been released today and is available for download from the Files section.

We are proud to announce that this is the first version of the Importer/Exporter tool supporting PostgreSQL/PostGIS. It was ported from the Oracle version and supports all features except from the Oracle workspace management. Existing plugins were also translated and are available from the Plugins section in the Wiki.

An introduction to the PostGIS port is given in a tutorial document which can be downloaded from the Documents section. This introduction also contains a how-to for setting up the 3D City Database on PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Additional documents provide detailed insights on the conversion of Oracle-specific PL/SQL scripts and Java classes to PostgreSQL/PostGIS. For general guidance and instructions regarding the 3D City Database and the Importer/Exporter tool, please refer to the 3D City Database documentation and the recent addendum to be found here.

Please note that this release is still a beta version. Even though it was tested thoroughly with various datasets of different size and content we cannot guarantee that no errors occur during imports and exports. It is strongly recommended running the PostGIS port in a dedicated testing environment first.

See the Changelog for more details.

The 3D City Database version 2.0.6-postgis-beta is a mandatory dependency of the Importer/Exporter version 1.4.0-postgis-beta.

On 24 April 2012, the Open Geospatial Consortium membership adopted version 2.0 of CityGML (see the official press release for more information).

I have been working since then on adding support for CityGML 2.0 in citygml4j. Most of the implementation work is complete and a release candidate of the upcoming version 2.0 of citygml4j will hopefully be available soon. Only minor things such as testing, some modifications to the sample programs, and Wiki documentation are still open. However, I am strongly focusing on my PhD thesis currently - so stay tuned!

Besides some new features and bugfixes, citygml4j 2.0 will also bring minor changes to the API in order to support CityGML 2.0. My current plans are to discontinue the full support for CityGML 0.4.0 as this version has never been an official OGC standard. Reading CityGML 0.4.0 instances will still be possible by internally mapping them onto CityGML 1.0 instances. But support for writing and validating will be canceled. Let me know what you all think about this by leaving a comment below.

You can follow the development in the 1.1-devel branch (initially, a minor revision of CityGML to version 1.1 was planned) of the citygml4j SVN repository. The branch is highly unstable and is not recommended for porting exisiting citygml4j-based software.

Cheers,
Claus