GeoPackage

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OGC GeoPackage Encoding Standard
Status OGC Standard Implementation Specification
Latest version 1.1
Domain Open Geospatial Consortium
Website OGC GeoPackage Standard Working Group

GeoPackage (GPKG) is an open, non-proprietary, platform-independent and standards-based data format for geographic information system based on the SQLite database format. Defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium[1] with the backing of the US Military[2] and published in 2014, it has seen wide widespread support from major vendors including Esri and Safe Software, as well as open source packages such as GDAL, QGIS and GeoServer.[3]

Origin

Despite dozens of file formats and services for exchanging geospatial data, there was not an open format which could support both raster and vector data, while being efficiently decodable by open source software, particularly in mobile devices.[4][5] This need was formally expressed at OGC in 2012.[6] The candidate standard was approved by OGC in January 2014[7]

Format

GeoPackage is built up as an extended Spatialite database file (*.gpkg) containing data & metadata tables with specified definitions, integrity assertions, format limitations and content constraints. It describes a set of conventions for storing vector features, tile matrix sets of imagery and raster maps at various scales, schema and metadata. It is extensible through the use of custom extensions.

GeoPackage was designed to be as lightweight as possible and contained in one ready-to-use single file. This makes it suitable for mobile applications in disconnected mode[8] and rapid sharing on cloud storage, USB drives, etc. It uses SQLite spatial indexes in order to speed up performances to spatial queries compared to traditional geospatial files formats.

Limitations

  • GeoPackage doesn't allow the use of non-spatial tables
  • GeoPackage only supports one geometry column per table

References

External links