Introduction

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• What is Docker?

• What is the point of these exercises?

Objectives

• Learn about Docker and why we’re using it

Let’s learn about Docker and why we’re using it!

Regardless of what you encounter in this lesson, the definitive guide is any official documentation provided by Docker.

What is Docker?

From the Docker website

A container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another. A Docker container image is a lightweight, standalone, executable package of software that includes everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries and settings.

In short, Docker allows a user to work in a computing environment that has been frozen with respect to interdependent libraries and code and related tools. This means that you can use the same software that analysts were using 10 years ago (for example) without downloading all the relevant 10-year-old libraries. :)

What can I learn here?

As much as we’d like, we can’t give you a complete overview of Docker. However, we do hope to explain why we run Docker in the way we do so that you gain some understanding. More specifically, we’ll be showing you how to set up Docker for not just this workshop, but for interfacing with the CMS open data in general

Key Points

• Docker is an implementation of a tool called a container that gives us a self-consistent computing environment

• Docker is widely used these days in both industry and academic research

• Docker is one way that you can interface with CMS data using the same computing tools as CMS collaborators