Comments on: The GIS Interchange File

By: Matthew Snape

Matthew Snape — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:14:54 +0000

The defacto interchange format is shapefile. The point of an interchange format is that everyone can read it, and support for shp is better than any other format.

By: Doug Nebert

Doug Nebert — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:45:27 +0000

Sending files as email attachments seems an awkward way to go, especially in the days of large data volume and the potential for custom retrieval. The use of OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) is a way to request and retrieve, via HTTP GET or POST, GML features. The Simple Features GML encoding, mentioned earlier, is roughly equivalent to a shapefile, whereas full GML 3.X will allow you to encode more complex structures analogous to a geodatabase. Also, if one sets up the hosting webserver to perform compression, a client that can uncompress on-the-fly can request it that way, or without compression if not. Most GIS packages can now communicate with WFS using GML (and even KML sometimes) to get custom retrievals of vector data.

By: GummibÃ¤rli

GummibÃ¤rli — Fri, 09 May 2008 06:58:22 +0000

Using an interchange, neutral format as Interlis (http://www.interlis.ch) is worth a look, but it goes far beyond only exchanging geodata (modelling, check, etc.).
It’s pure genius, but trying to replace the ubiquitous Shapefile through Interlis is like promoting esperanto (or interlingua) in international business, nice idea, but hopless…

By: Robyn

Robyn — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:35:56 +0000

Hey, really sorry if that seemed spam-ish.
I was really just trying to be helpful… thought I was pretty honest about where I was coming from. Just wanted to give you guys access to something that might help… no worries if you’re not interested. And really- if you’ve got any questions fee free to contact me directly.

By: jesse

jesse — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:05:06 +0000

Thanks for the spam, Robyn.

By: Robyn

Robyn — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:17:47 +0000

In the spirit of honest blogging- I’m in marketing at YouSendIt and caught Ryan’s comment on my google alerts.

Technically speaking you guys are WAY over my head- but I do know how to send big files, easily.
Our desktop application (available, free at http://www.yousendit.com/cms/applications) lets you to just drag and drop files or FOLDERS of any type. (the folders just automatically zip up and send)

Pretty simple!

Use the promo code “RHORBP21″ for a free one month upgrade. Feel free to shoot me an email if you get stuck…
Robyn@yousendit.com

Good Luck!

By: Steve Grise

Steve Grise — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:43:53 +0000

Every ArcGIS Desktop User has “Quick Import” and “Quick Export” tools in the ArcGIS Toolboxes. This allows import/export of Simple Features GML.

It is not shown by default in the list of Toolboxes but it is there under “Data Interoperability Tools” (not part of the extension so perhaps confusing). With the Data Interop extension you can work with those files directly in ArcMap etc. – and the performance is pretty good.

For me this is much better than shapefiles because I can do xml/xslt work with GML. I’ve been doing some geology/GeoSciML work lately and SF GML is handy and strangely fun once you get used to xslt.

ArcGIS 9.3 has some good capabilities on client and server side for SF GML and WFS.

The other obvious ArcGIS format is FileGDB. You end up with a lot of files within a zip file but a compressed FileGDB is amazingly small. I haven’t seen an email server that strips them.

By: mark

mark — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:54:39 +0000

.rar is the best, unfortunately not everyone has winrar. Splitting the files up into several smaller chunks is probably the best way of handling large volumes of data.

By: George Silva

George Silva — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:11:50 +0000

rapidshare outright. safe and easy.

By: AA

AA — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:07:46 +0000

Seems like everyone is thinking about it:

http://www.gcn.com/print/27_10/46221-1.html