[gdal-dev] ESRI file geodatabase support

[Matt Wilkie]

The earliest reference I found to a "promise" of an open specification 
for file-gdb was ESRI UC 2006, with discussion where of a forthcoming 
public specification mentioned as far back as ArcGIS 8.3.

In many discussions people seem to use the terms open API and open file 
format specifications interchangeably. ESRI itself seems to be pretty 
clearly sticking to API-only line though, from the 2007 UC:

"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." -- http://bit.ly/esri-uc-qa-2007

If you've a reference for talk of the file fromat spec though I'd love 
to see it. Searching for (EMEA) User Conference 2008 shows a few 
announcements for the event but no proceedings or blog reports; I'm 
likely not using the right keywords.

I also echo the request for people attending *any* ESRI conferences to 
ask about both a public file format specifcation and programming API to 
the file geodatabase.

best regards,

matt wilkie
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Geomatics Analyst
Information Management and Technology
Yukon Department of Environment
10 Burns Road * Whitehorse, Yukon * Y1A 4Y9
867-667-8133 Tel * 867-393-7003 Fax
http://environmentyukon.gov.yk.ca/geomatics/
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