Yes, they are definitely positioning FGDBs as the replacement for
shapefiles - at least in their world. FGDB has a lot of advantages for
them - no limit on file size, able to contain all of the weird and
wonderful ESRI data structures, and platform-independent. Oh, and no
11-char limit on field names!!!
<philosophy>
Personally I can't see it replacing the role that Shapefiles play in the
wider geospatial world - that is, a (fairly( open, easily-accessible,
documented spatial data format. The FGDB format is closed and
proprietary - only the API is somewhat open. And it's written in C,
which limits its use in some situations. Also, the FGDB format is very
complex, and completely tailored to support ESRI's needs, rather than a
more general set of needs.
It would be GREAT to have a truly open geospatial format, which was
essentially a shapefile for the 21st century. GML is NOT that
format... so the field lies open
</philosophy>
It would be great to have a solution for accessing FGDBs from Java
(OpenJUMP of course, but I'd also like to be able to read them from
JEQL). If OJ could read them that should make it quite appealing for
working with newer ESRI data.
One possiblity is this work on a Java interface to the FGDB API. If
this project has taken care of all the JNI nastiness, then it could be
worth using.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jfilegdbexplore/
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/jfilegdbexplore/>
I know that the GDAL project is working on adding a driver for the FGDB
API. This is in C, of course, so not directly usable by OJ.
Martin
On 8/3/2011 8:27 AM, Larry Becker wrote:
It would seem that ESRI is positioning the "file geodatabase" as the
heir to the shapefile. They now have a cross-platform API that
provides access without ArcObjects.
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/31841-Welcome-to-the-discussion-forum-for-the-File-Geodatabase-API!
Is this something the JUMP community should look into supporting?
Larry
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