Thanks for the overview on this.. ede On 04.08.2011 01:28, Martin Davis wrote: > 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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