I've lost all confidence that ESRI's as yet unpublished API will be open
enough to allow gdal/ogr to use it without reverse engineering.
Although promised years ago (ESRI UC, 2007) they've been dragging their
feet and being quite close mouthed about the whole thing. Even as
recently as a few months ago they have been unwilling to even say if it
will be usuable without purchasing a run-time license. Apparently they
did say at the March developer summit that there will be no support for
Annotation, Relationships, Networks, Topologies, Representations,
Terrains and Parcel Fabrics in FGDB API. Simple Features only, and C++ only.
Personally, I think it's time to give up waiting for the fgdb api and
start looking into a truly open source alternative for a shapefile
successor. SpatialLite is the best candidate I know of.
Of course we can't ignore the fgdb as for better or ill we still live
and operate within an ecosystem dominated by ESRI. It just won't be the
next lingua franca, used by all as a common exchange format.
Sources:
http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=93&f=985&t=243828
http://spatialgalaxy.net/2010/03/28/speculations-on-the-file-geodatabase-api/
http://www.spatialdbadvisor.com/blog/121/the-shapefile-manifesto/
matt wilkie
--------------------------------------------
Geomatics Analyst
Information Management and Technology
Yukon Department of Environment
10 Burns Road * Whitehorse, Yukon * Y1A 4Y9
867-667-8133 Tel * 867-393-7003 Fax
http://environmentyukon.gov.yk.ca/geomatics/
--------------------------------------------
On 09/06/2010 11:23 AM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
Eduardo Kanegae wrote:
Hi,
I´ve this topic at Google
http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/When-or-if-OGR-can-support-ESRI-file-geodatabase-td2592778.html
Is there any plan for OGR on supporting this ESRI format or this will
depend on 'when' ESRI be able to open this format specification.
Eduardo,
Ragi Burhum has offered an ArcObjects based solution/driver for reading file
geodatabases for those with an ArcObject license. I'm not sure what the
exact status of that driver is since I'm not in a position to help with it.
For a less encumbered solution for file geodatabase we are effectively
waiting to see what ESRI provides in the manner of an SDK for reading them.
Once we have that, it is also not clear who, if anyone, would turn it into
an OGR driver.
Best regards,
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