Slashgeo

GISUser and GISCafé have the press release where Safe Software announces the availability of FME 2006. From the PR: "FME 2006 incorporates over 1000 evolutionary product enhancements requested by FME users. [...] In addition to tutorials and traditional Help files included with this product release, Safe Software also recently created a new resource for FME 2006 users in the form of an online user community, or wiki, at www.fmepedia.com."

Randoms Nodes discuss the Feature Data Objects (FDO) open source library. From the OSGeo FDO page: "Feature Data Objects (FDO) is an [C++] API for manipulating, defining, and analyzing geospatial information regardless of where it is stored. FDO uses a provider-based model for supporting a variety of geospatial data sources, where each provider typically supports a particular data format or data store." When I inquired about FDO and GEOS, Jason's answer included: "I am certainly not an expert on FDO, but I don’t believe that there is any code-level relationship between GEOS and FDO. [...] Spatial querying is only a subset of what FDO does though. It also supports standard attribute queries, user management, data creation, etc." Any comments?

Camptocamp announced the release of Spatial Data Integrator 1.1, an open source ETL (extract, transform, load) solution. From the press release: " Based on Talend’s data integration technology, Talend Open Studio (TOS), SDI includes components such as reading/writing main SIG file formats, geospatial data transformation, and creation/publication of metadata. SDI uses the following Open Source components: GeoTools, JTS, GeoNames Webservices, GeoNetwork [...] This new version of SDI combines various developments [...] These developments include: Projections support at Input/Output and data reprojections support; 2 new components groups: GeoCoding et DataQuality; [...]" See also related stories below.

The OSGeo announced the graduation of Autodesk's FDO, GDAL and GRASS GIS from their incubation process. From the announcement: "Graduating incubation includes requirements for open community operation, a responsible project governance model, code provenance and license verification and general good project operation. Graduating incubation is the OSGeo seal of approval for a project and gives potential users of the project added confidence in the viability and safety of the project." Related stories included below.

Spatially Adjusted late in December discussed a simple yet revealing example of using OGR to visualize data. From SA: "Take GDAL/OGR for example, the webpage probably scares off most users because of the lack of examples of how to use both toolsets. But the tools themselves are so easy to use this shouldn’t scare anyone off. [...] That said Tom Kralidis has a great example of using OGR to convert a Microsoft Excel file to KML. GDAL/OGR is integral to so many GIS applications (even ESRI uses it) that any GIS professional should have at least a basic understanding to how it works." GDAL/OGR 1.5.0 was released late last year and see also this story when OpenLayers revealed itself as a data converter and an example of using a one OGR command to publish a point shapefile to html.

The OSGeo-Announce mailing list informs us the open source GDAL/OGR 1.5.0 has been released. Considering the almost ubiquitous use of GDAL in open source and proprietary software, this is doubtlessly great news, especially with the numerous new drivers included for 1.5.0. Mateusz Loskot provides a few statistics: "more than 420 tickets closed on the Trac, implemented 17 new GDAL drivers for raster formats, and 4 new OGR drivers for vectors, implemented 4 (5 counting RFC 16) RFC documents, added 5 new command line utilities, plus, big number of features and improvements in SWIG bindings for scripting languages." In related news, Proj.4 4.6.0 has also been released.

Here's a few recent geoblog entries that I found interesting on the topic of tools to share information. First is the ability to use OpenLayers as a data converter: " OpenLayers Data Conversion is a new service that allows easy conversion from any of the formats that OpenLayers supports to any of the formats that OpenLayers supports. Simply paste your data, choose your format, and hit convert." Next is the capacity of GDAL 1.5 to import spatial references from URLs using, as an example, the SpatialReference.org website. And finally, PerryGeo demonstrate a quick way to publish a point shapefile to html, using a single command.

The GDAL mailing list informs us the widely used GDAL/OGR 1.4.4 has been released: "This is a bug fix release in the 1.4.x stable release series and adds no significant new features. This release replaces the GDAL/OGR 1.4.3 release which has been retracted by the project as it included an unexpected ABI (Application Binary Interface) change from the earlier 1.4.x releases." Here's the detailed changes.

Safe Software writes "Today Safe Software introduced a free FME® FDO Provider for AutoCAD® Map 3D 2008. Map 3D users now have a faster and easier way to access nine popular import formats. Available for download today at www.safe.com/fmefdo, the free FME FDO Provider integrates with the Data Connect dialog to enable quick connectivity to key spatial data formats, including ESRI® ArcInfo Export (E00), Geography Markup Language (GML), and MapInfo TAB/MIF/MID. With just a few clicks, Map 3D users can conveniently read data directly, without having to copy the datasets. When the data changes, users’ drawings will automatically reflect the most recent information. Users can also easily upgrade to FME, a powerful spatial ETL platform, for access to over 200 additional CAD, GIS, raster and database formats, such as ArcSDE Raster, MapInfo SpatialWare, and KML (Google Earth). To access the download, visit www.safe.com/fmefdo"

The GDAL mailing list announced the release of GDAL/OGR 1.4.3. Here's the bugfix list and new features. GDAL is quite mature, being used by ESRI, Google, most open source geospatial software and many more. From the official site: "GDAL is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that is released under an X/MIT style Open Source license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful commandline utilities for data translation and processing. [...] The related OGR library (which lives within the GDAL source tree) provides a similar capability for simple features vector data." Copied below is a link to the previous story on comparing FDO, GDAL/OGR and FME. Update: 11/02 18:14 GMT by S : Wouhou! A colleague just made me realize the GDAL WMS driver is included in this release, and with little efforts, we made it work. This is great news and a new easy way to add WMS support for projects which uses GDAL/OGR. However, I don't know yet to which extent the driver can be considered mature or not.

The Terra ETL blog runs another interesting entry, this time on Extract, Transform and Load, fundamental steps of spatial analysis and sharing of data. The entry's introduction: "ETL or Extract, Transform, and Load is a process in Data Warehousing. Data Warehouses are all around us - whether we are querying the Yellow Pages on-line to geo-coding our datasets, there is most often a database or data warehouse behind the scenes. But how we get data into the warehouse, is called ETL. This is a short introduction to ETL as it is an important part of data warehousing. I also cover a little about Spatial ETL." See also related stories.

Safe Software writes "Safe Software to Demonstrate Technology for Data Exchange between Proprietary and Open Source Platforms at FOSS4G Excerpt from press release: Safe Software, the recognized leader in providing spatial ETL (extract, transform and load) tools for translating and transforming spatial data, today announced that the company is sponsoring and presenting at the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference in Victoria, BC, from September 24-27. Conference attendees will have several opportunities to learn how the company's FME platform can play an important role in improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of geospatial systems by serving as a bridge for exchanging data between open source and proprietary software. For more details, visit www.safe.com."

Safe Software writes "Safe Software, makers of the FME spatial ETL platform for geospatial data, announced a joint agreement with TCI Software to integrate TCI’s Curvefitter linear optimization technology into the newest version, FME 2007. This integration provides users with the ability to create smooth linework from "point to point" linework while reducing file size by up to 80 percent. Other benefits include faster processing for CAD and GIS data and the ability to create more visually appealing maps. For detailed information, visit www.safe.com/curvefitter."

Safe Software writes "FME 2007 introduces support for raster data, making it the industry's first complete spatial ETL tool. It also includes more than 2100 enhancements. For a free trial, white paper and FME 2007 highlights document, visit www.safe.com/2007."

The GDAL-Dev list indicated GDAL/OGR 1.4.1 has been released. From the announcement: " This is a "Stable Branch Release", which is something new for GDAL/OGR. That means it contains virtually no new features, but it does contain all important bug fixes since 1.4.0. It should be possible for anyone using GDAL/OGR 1.4.0 to upgrade to GDAL/OGR 1.4.1 with a minimum of concern of new bugs or disruptive changes." Here's the overview of changes. GDAL/OGR is arguably the most important geospatial open source software, being used by numerous open source geospatial projects and proprietary projects including Google and ESRI.