[geotk] Geodatabase converter

[Martin Desruisseaux]

Hello Leo

Le 30/12/2018 à 01:32, Russ, Leo a écrit :

> Our company, Alamon Telecommunications (https://alamon.com), is
> looking for means (such an open source Java API) to convert shapefiles
> to Geodatabase (.gdb) format and/or generate Geodatabase files
> programmatically using our data. We are a Java/Linux shop. Please
> advise if something like that is available, and if not, would it be
> possible to write a converter we could use in our application?
>
Welcome! and thanks for contacting us. Geotk can read and write
Shapefiles, but not yet Geodatabase as far as I know (Johann may correct
me if I'm wrong). Geodatabase seems to be an ESRI specific format [1].
Writing in that format currently requires ESRI drivers [2], which I
presume are subject to licensing conditions. The GDAL open source
project (C/C++) can read Geodatabase files without the need for ESRI
driver [3], but this is read-only. Write operations with GDAL requires
the ESRI driver [4].

One possible action can be to investigate the licensing conditions for
ESRI Geodatabase library [2]. If those conditions are acceptable, then
it may be possible to use GDAL "ogr2ogr" [5] directly.

Another possible action is to develop the Java code for writing
Geodatabase files. Since I have not seen a specification for this file
format yet, I do not know how much work it would require.

Finally, before to take any of above-cited citation, did you considered
using Geopackage [6] as an alternative to Geodatabase? Geopackage is an
international standard, contrarily to Geodatabase which is
vendor-specific. ESRI supports also Geopackage, and I suspect that
Geopackage can be seen as a successor of Geodatabase.


> We are willing contribute to your project.
>
That would be great! For information, we are migrating progressively
Geotk functionalities to Apache Spatial Information System (SIS) [7].
Apache SIS is a top level project from the Apache Software Foundation.
So if we were to develop a new file format, we may try to develop it
there if possible.

    Regards,

        Martin


[1] https://helpwiki.evergreen.edu/wiki/index.php/ArcGIS_10:_What_is_a_Geodatabase%3F
[2] http://appsforms.esri.com/products/download/#File_Geodatabase_API_1.3
[3] https://www.gdal.org/drv_openfilegdb.html
[4] https://www.gdal.org/drv_filegdb.html
[5] https://www.gdal.org/ogr2ogr.html
[6] https://www.geopackage.org/
[7] http://sis.apache.org/

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