The shapefile slayer has yet to hatch
A few thoughts on what’s happening at the 2010 ESRI Development Summit.
To be clear, I did not go to Palm Springs this year, but tweeple like James Fee (@cageyjames) and Dave Bouwman (@dbouwman) brought it all to my Twitter timeline (sans the sun tan).
One development was of particular interest to me this year – the file geodatabase (FGDB) story. Months ago we heard rumors of an impending open application programming interface (API) for the FGDB. The advent of the FGDB open API was going to drive the last nail in the shapefile’s coffin.
What’s the news today?
Tweets @cageyjames: “Sounds like FGDB API is still a ways off.” And: “No support for Annotation, Relationships, Networks, Topologies, Representations, Terrains and Parcel Fabrics in FGDB API.”
No shapefile slayer on the horizon, in other words. And if you want the real GIS stuff (like topology), you must keep paying that maintenance. Unless you take a page out of Donny V.’s (@Donny_V) book: “Can you create/update/delete data? If so then everything else can be built using open source. ;-)”
Posted by Atanas Entchev at 3/24/2010 7:02 PM 
Categories: news, file geodatabase, FGDB, Business, GIS, Software, shapefile, ESRI, Twitter, GDB, ArcGIS, geodatabase
Tags: news file geodatabase FGDB Business GIS Software shapefile 2010 ESRI Twitter GDB ArcGIS geodatabase
Categories: news, file geodatabase, FGDB, Business, GIS, Software, shapefile, ESRI, Twitter, GDB, ArcGIS, geodatabase
Tags: news file geodatabase FGDB Business GIS Software shapefile 2010 ESRI Twitter GDB ArcGIS geodatabase
Like you, I'm piecing together details from Jim and Dave. I, however, disagree with their view. While it's probably not the end-all shapefile replacement, I think it's a step in the right direction. I was not surprised that it was limited in functionality, because that same functionality limit is imposed in the ArcView level license. What bothered me is that the API is C only. No Python? There has better be a wrapper. ESRI could really branch out into the OS software market by providing great (Python) tools to OS developers to use the FGDB as their web mashup storage format, they'd be embraced by the OS crowd while providing a pathway into the ESRI stack.
These are all business decisions. ESRI, as a business, does what businesses do, which is tweak the knobs to maximize return. Short-term or long-term? Hard to say not knowing ESRI's long-term strategy (e.g., what happens when Jack retires).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that "a step in the right direction" can mean different things to different people.
A truly open FGDB API would let folks into the circle of trust - reading and writing native data. When was the last time you saw open access to the native file format from ESRI? From Autodesk?
Hmmm. I thought so.
Letting those outsiders in will increase the amount of potential customers. ESRI stands to benefit. They provide universities the Arc software at very little cost because they know it will increase the number of ESRI software users. Like drug pushers, the first fix is free (students get an ArcEditor install disc, one-year timeout) but then you're hooked. Making the FGDB API easier to use would also make it attractive to those open source developers not currently addicted... uh, using the ESRI stack.