[Qgis-user] FW: Esri File Geodatabase API Is Now Available

[Alex Mandel]

On 06/07/2011 09:45 AM, William Kyngesburye wrote:
> On Jun 7, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Alex Mandel wrote:
> 
>> I'm positive they are binary *.so. The more important development is
>> http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_filegdb.html
>>
>> Which means yes support could be available soon via gdal/ogr.
>>
>> I just grabbed it real quick and it looks like this format is going to
>> be like Mrsid and ECW where individual users will need to get the files
>> and patch their gdal installs.
>>
>> The download has 2 .so files and a directory of .h files which I believe
>> are API samples.
>>
>> The author of the gdal driver is a Mac user though so we should follow
>> up with him about if he's found a way to get it to work on MAC.
>>
> The only way it can work natively on OS X is if ESRI made OS X libraries available (they didn't) or source available (they didn't).  It could be done on virtualized Linux, but no Mac programs would be able to use it.
> 
> -----
> William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/
> 

I think they are targeting service based applications that need to
translate data for other uses, and given the low numbers of Mac servers
out there I'm not surprised. They also stuck to their officially
supported platforms which in the case of linux is actually only Redhat
and SUSE. The same platforms you can run their other products on.

One interesting idea would be if someone setup a website that takes the
upload of a gdb and then offers the download of it's content in more
open formats.

Thanks,
Alex