[Gdal-dev] changes to ArcGIS data store coming

[Matt Wilkie]

Gdal Developers,

In version 9.2 of ArcGIS ESRI will be introducing a new data store to 
supplant ms-access personal geodatabases. They are promsing to publish 
an open API to the new store the same way they did for shapefiles.

Upcoming changes to geodatabases in arcgis 9.2:
http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/summer05articles/managing-spatial-data.html

Things which caught my attention (mostly near the bottom):

"Archiving Geodatabase History — A key goal of ArcGIS 9.2 is to allow
efficient storage and query of historical database states

"Double Precision —  [for] The entire GIS stack ... This allows a single
spatial domain to be used for the whole globe (!)

"File-Based Geodatabase — At ArcGIS 9.2, the complete functionality of a
personal geodatabase and its complete information model have been
implemented on top of a file system. File-based geodatabases fully
support vector; raster; terrain; annotation; and all other geodatabase
data types, rules, and relationships without the performance and
geodatabase size limitations of a Microsoft Access database. In
performance tests to date, the file-based geodatabase implementation not
only outperforms the Microsoft Access personal geodatabase, but it also
outperforms the shapefile for display and query operations."

On the FME wiki there is a small note saying the API itself won't be out 
for v9.2 "ESRI tell us that they have a C++ api in the pipeline for this 
format. That would be great because we wouldn't need to use ArcObjects 
and therefore users wouldn't need ArcGIS installed to write to it from 
FME. It's not specified when this will be - but it won't be in v9.2"
http://www.fmepedia.com/index.php/Support_-_Geodatabase_FAQ


cheers,

-- 
matt wilkie
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