[GRASS-user] ESRI formats: gdb and shp

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2020, Daniel Victoria wrote:

> This is an old PDF (2009) but it lists some advantages of file geodatabase.
> https://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0309/files/9reasons.pdf

Daniel,

Thanks for the URI.

> Another thing worth mentioning is that in order to do topological analysis
> in ESRIs world, you would need to use geodatabases since shapefiles does
> not carry topology information.

That's what I thought. Of course I don't work in ESRI-world; not since I was
a PC-ARC/Info beta tester in 1987.

> But you mentioned that you are dealing with point data. I never heard of
> using topology with point data. So you are probably fine importing from
> either one (shape or gdb) Also, don't know it the topology part of a GDB
> file is recognized by OGR/grass. I believe Grass generates the topology
> once it's imports vector data, be it from shapefile or GDB.

I believe you're correct in this. When I collect a data set I try to include
all information as I don't know what would be needed in the future.

> Now, if the attribute table has long column names, accents and things like
> that, it's probably correct in the GDB. Remember that shapefiles use DBF
> for attribute table...

Nah. Not applicable.

> Disclaimer: I haven´t used an ESRI product in a long time. So the
> information in here could be outdated

Yet it's perfectly good to answer my question.

Best regards,

Rich