[Qgis-user] Working with geopackages in Qgis

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Stéphane, 

Thanks for your ideas. It is my personal goal (and the goal of the Swiss
QGIS user group) to make Geopackage the number 1 file-based format in
QGIS and put Shapefiles in the graveyard. 

Therefore we paid Even Rouault in the past for some geopackage
improvements. Swiss provinces also invested into a tool name ili2gpkg -
a tool that can read official swiss data models in Interlis format and
generate the data structure in a geopackage - incl. import of data, if
it already exists. This is in parallel with a similar tool called ili2pg
that does the same for Postgis. 

As you discovered there are more issues around Geopackages to make them
as hassle-free as possible. I also think the raster part of geopackages
did not get too much attention so far. 

Since you have been so successful with your campaign around improving
discrete/paletted rasters - may I suggest the same for Geopackage
improvements? You can start a list of useful improvements in a Google
Docs document or on Github as a QEP. Other people can contribute and we
can find a way to fund the improvements. Both QGIS-CH and QGIS.ORG could
help with the financing aspect. 

Some feedback to your 3 issues: 

ad 1): you are right - it is not possible to easily create an empty
geopackage. One always starts with a vector layer. 

ad 2): this should be fixed in QGIS master (QGIS 3). Just tested, works
fine 

ad 3): yes, would be useful 

I am sure there are more issues. Would be useful to collect them for
further improvements. 

Do you want to start a document? I would be glad to assist you. 

Let's also think about rasters. E.g. saving to a Geopackage should be as
easy as saving to a TIFF-file. Also in Processing. But I have to admit I
haven't really tested the raster part of Geopackage a lot. Maybe some
things are already possible. 

Greetings, 

Andreas 

On 2017-09-28 06:47, Stéphane Henriod wrote:

> Dear all 
> 
> I am making a few tests with Geopackages and I have a short list of behaviors or features that, IMO, would be quite nice to have in Qgis. But I'd like to have feedback from some of you before moving ahead. Maybe the majority disagrees with my opinion or maybe I have overlooked some already existing features :-) 
> 
> [currently testing on 2.18.11] 
> 
> 1) Creating a Geopackage DB 
> 
> As far as I see, the only way to create a Geopackage DB in Qgis is to create a new Geopackage layer. But there are cases where I don't want to create a new layer. I only want to create an empty Geopackage, so that I can later, e.g. import a bunch of shapefiles into it. 
> 
> Of course, I can create a geopackage layer and delete it later, but this is not super intuitive for the users 
> 
> 2) Qgis browser 
> 
> It would also be very handy to be able to browse the content of a Geopackage within the Qgis browser, so that we can drag-and-drop layers directly to the project 
> 
> 3) Multi-export to Geopackage 
> 
> If I want to migrate a whole project from Shapefiles and Tiff files to a single Geopackage DB, I would like to multi-select them and drag-and-drop them into an existing Geopackage DB (or  a _Save all layers as..._ in the contextual menu, when I select more than 1 layer) 
> 
> Just curious if those needs / ideas resonate and / or if there are already plans in these directions 
> 
> Thanks and cheers 
> Stéphane 
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-user mailing list
> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-user/attachments/20170928/38c46f22/attachment.html>