v1.0.0

We are happy to announce the first major version 1.0.0 of the ADE Manager, a plugin for the new version 4.0.0 of the Importer/Exporter. During the past year, we have worked hard to implement support for CityGML Application Domain Extensions (ADEs). The ADE mechanism is a built-in feature of CityGML that allows users to extend the CityGML data model with additional types, attributes and relations, which carry information required for specific applications and which are integrated with the predefined 3D city objects. ADEs are becoming more and more popular, and are defined for various application fields such as energy assessment and simulation (Energy ADE) or modelling of utility networks (UtilityNetwork ADE). A non-exhaustive list of further ADE developments is available here.

With this ADE Manager plugin, the 3DCityDB database schema can be dynamically extended by arbitrary ADEs. We have developed a transform method that reads the XML Schema definition of an ADE and automatically derives a relational schema that seamlessly integrates with the 3DCityDB core schema. This transform method is mainly implemented based on the open-source graph transformation engine (AGG) for realizing the automatic transformation of the object-oriented data model to a compact relational database model. In addition, an XML-based schema-mapping file can also be automatically generated which contains the relevant meta-information about the derived database schema as well as the explicit mapping relationships between the two schemas and allows developers to implement applications for managing and processing the ADE data contents stored in a 3DCityDB instance.

You may use an example ADE to test out and learn more about the functionalities offered by this ADE Manager plugin.