[Gdal-dev] Esri File geodatabase in GDAL?

[Matt Wilkie]

> ESRI has indicated that the File Geodatabase will have an "Open API" but
> I haven't seen any clear explanation of what that means and the folks at
> ESRI I spoke to about it some months ago indicated they hadn't really
> decided yet.  When that is worked out and published, I'd like to have
> it implemented though doing a good job would likely require some funding.

Word from this year's ESRI International User Conference is that the api 
will be published sometime after ArcGIS 9.3 is released. When is 9.3 
then? "We are still in the development phase but we expect to be in beta 
later this year with a release in mid 2008." This tells me we're looking 
at a year or more before we see the API.

Q&A from this year's UC can be fetched from http://tinyurl.com/22coph
The following is "What are ESRI’s plans for opening up access to the 
geodatabase?"

<quote>
ESRI will provide full and open access to the geodatabase using the 
following methods:

     * A free and open API to the file geodatabase. * The file 
geodatabase was introduced at ArcGIS 9.2. While ESRI would ideally like 
to open the file geodatabase format in a manner similar to what we did 
for shapefiles when we released ArcView 2, geodatabases are complex and 
can be easily corrupted outside the ArcGIS environment. Instead, we plan 
to engineer a high performing and well documented API that developers 
can freely embed in custom applications and that will read and write 
file geodatabase datasets. This will be released after ArcGIS 9.3.

     * Geodatabase GML. ESRI will release a full geodatabase GML schema 
with ArcGIS 9.3. This profile will be based on the OGC specifications 
and built on the simple feature GML specification adopted by OGC this 
past year.
</quote>

I'm just speculating here, but the words "engineer a high performing 
...API" make me think they are working out how to have some software act 
as intermediary between applications using the api (like gdal-ogr) and 
the fgdb itself. If this is so this will not be shapefiles writ large 
and reborn and there will still be significant limitations on who can 
use it and where.

Until the api is officially out though it is just a guessing game. No 
one knows yet what kind of "open" ESRI means, and personally I think 
they themselves aren't sure yet either. I certainly never expected to 
see GDAL actually officially embedded in 9.2, so who knows?

cheers,

-- 
matt wilkie
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