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What is the recommended file format for ArcGIS?


sigtill
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Skipping Shape and FileGDB. And skipping databases. What is the best / most feature rich file format to open in ArcGIS ? GeoPackage? SQLITE?

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13 replies

lars_de_vries
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I think it is hard to answer this question. Do you want to be able to open the data in ArcGIS Desktop/Pro or is it just about storing the data?

I could say Personal Geodatabase, but it is a database as well. And I don't think you can directly Read a EsriJSON file in Desktop or Pro. So what do you want to do with it?


sigtill
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  • June 13, 2018

I think it is hard to answer this question. Do you want to be able to open the data in ArcGIS Desktop/Pro or is it just about storing the data?

I could say Personal Geodatabase, but it is a database as well. And I don't think you can directly Read a EsriJSON file in Desktop or Pro. So what do you want to do with it?

Non-esri format prefered. To be used for read only.

To my knowledge ArcGIS does not distinguish between SQLITE or GeoPackage, they are just different schemas and ways of storing geometries in a SQLite-db and apparently cross-functional for some time.

desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/10.3/manage-data/databases/sqlite-and-arcgis.htm#

http://isticktoit.net/?p=1832


david_r
Celebrity

You're constraining yourself a lot here... I would probably go for GeoPackage, since it seems to have a promising future, which ESRI seems to want to be a part of:

http://www.esri.com/esri-news/releases/14-2qtr/esri-supports-ogc-geopackage-encoding-standard


lars_de_vries
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A weird alternative, and maybe not to data-rich, could be DWG. But all is depending on the data you wish to store.


david_r
Celebrity

Oh, and if it's rasters you need: NetCDF is hard to beat in terms of features.


sigtill
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  • June 13, 2018

You're constraining yourself a lot here... I would probably go for GeoPackage, since it seems to have a promising future, which ESRI seems to want to be a part of:

http://www.esri.com/esri-news/releases/14-2qtr/esri-supports-ogc-geopackage-encoding-standard

Yes, this feels like the best open format to work with - and its also great in QGIS. I`ll try to go this path and see the clients feedback. The reasons I want to move away from FileGDB and ESRI-formats is due to them being more closed than GeoPackage and SQLite.

 

 


sigtill
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A weird alternative, and maybe not to data-rich, could be DWG. But all is depending on the data you wish to store.

Yep, thats an alternative - however its quite "old" and it might be issues with attributes.

 

 


sigtill
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  • June 13, 2018

Oh, and if it's rasters you need: NetCDF is hard to beat in terms of features.

Thanks, It seems NetCDF 4 is not supported in FME. I`ll try to use the GeoPackage Raster to see how the performance is. I guess a regular JPEG-compressed GeoTIFF might also do the trick.

 

 


lars_de_vries
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Yep, thats an alternative - however its quite "old" and it might be issues with attributes.

 

 

If you van add blocks, preferably from a template, you have quite some possibilities.

 

And you didn't say it needed to be new... ;-)

david_r
Celebrity
Thanks, It seems NetCDF 4 is not supported in FME. I`ll try to use the GeoPackage Raster to see how the performance is. I guess a regular JPEG-compressed GeoTIFF might also do the trick.

 

 

NetCDF 4 is actually supported starting with FME 2018.

sigtill
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  • June 14, 2018
NetCDF 4 is actually supported starting with FME 2018.
Thx, didn't know that!

 

 


sigtill
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  • June 14, 2018
If you van add blocks, preferably from a template, you have quite some possibilities.

 

And you didn't say it needed to be new... ;-)
True, blame the guy making the specifications, me :)