- Comparison of Vector Formats (GIS)
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The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of vector GIS file formats. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.
General information
Design Authority Software license Geography Markup Language GML Open Geospatial Consortium ? AutoCAD DXF Shapefile ESRI Simple Features MapInfo TAB format National Transfer Format TIGER Cartesian coordinate system Vector Product Format GeoMedia Feature Types
Point Multipoint Line Polyline MultiPolyline Polygon Multipolygon Personal Geodatabase Yes No Yes No No Yes No Shapefile[1] Yes Yes ? Yes Yes Yes No - Geography Markup Language (GML) - XML based open standard developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium for GIS data exchange
- AutoCAD DXF - Contour elevation plots in AutoCAD DXF format
- Shapefile - ESRI's open, hybrid vector data format using SHP, SHX and DBF files
- Simple Features - Open Geospatial Consortium specification for vector data
- MapInfo TAB format - MapInfo's vector data format using TAB, DAT, ID and MAP files
- National Transfer Format (NTF) - National Transfer Format (mostly used by the UK Ordnance Survey)
- TIGER - Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
- Cartesian coordinate system (XYZ) - Simple point cloud
- Vector Product Format - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)'s format of vectored data for large geographic databases.
- GeoMedia - Intergraph's Microsoft Access based format for spatial vector storage.
- ISFC - Intergraph's MicroStation based CAD solution attaching vector elements to a relational Microsoft Access database
- Personal Geodatabase - ESRI's closed, integrated vector data storage strategy using Microsoft's Access MDB format
- File Geodatabase - ESRI's geodatabase format, stored as folders in a file system.
- Coverage - ESRI's closed, hybrid vector data storage strategy. Legacy ArcGIS Workstation / ArcInfo format with reduced support in ArcGIS Desktop lineup
- Spatial Data File - Autodesk's high-performance geodatabase format, native to MapGuide
- GeoJSON - a lightweight format based on JSON, used by many open source GIS packages
References
- ^ ESRI (July, 1998). ESRI Shapefile technical description. pp. 4. http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf. Retrieved 2010-01-25.
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