[gdal-dev] Fastest vector format for combining shapefiles

[Howard Butler]

On Oct 19, 2009, at 7:59 AM, Doug_Newcomb at fws.gov wrote:

> I'm confused, I thought spatialite support was being added to ogr in  
> 1.7 . http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_sqlite.html
>
> As to ESRI, I asked at the last DOI meeting prior to the ESRI  
> conference this year about spatialite support and they said they had  
> no plans to support it.


> Of course, they used to say the same thing about postgresql/postgis  
> and if spatialite is implimented in ogr it will probably be included  
> down the road.

I don't know that ESRI uses OGR (vector), though I do know they are a  
GDAL (raster) user.  ESRI will probably on support spatialite if some  
big government agency mandates it in order for them to fulfill a  
contract.  There's no incentive for them to take on a competing format  
to their lock-in strategy (multiple kinds of a "file geodatabase").   
PostGIS/PostgreSQL doesn't compete with their lock-in (which is  
ArcSDE), and slightly tweaks one of their competitors (Oracle), so I  
think that move makes sense in that context.

Howard