The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

for reading and writing raster and

vector Vector most often refers to: *Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction *Vector (epidemiology), an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematic ...

geospatial data formats (e.g. shapefile), and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the

Open Source Geospatial Foundation The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 20 ...

. As a library, it presents a single

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data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It may also be built with a variety of useful command line interface

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for data translation and processing. Projections and transformations are supported by the PROJ library. The related ''OGR'' library (OGR Simple Features Library), which is part of the GDAL

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, provides a similar ability for simple features

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display ...

data. GDAL was developed mainly by Frank Warmerdam until the release of version 1.3.2, when maintenance was officially transferred to the GDAL/OGR Project Management Committee under the

. GDAL/OGR is considered a major

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project for its "extensive capabilities of data exchange" and also in the commercial GIS community due to its widespread use and comprehensive set of functionalities.

Software using GDAL/OGR

Several software programs use the GDAL/OGR libraries to allow them to read and write multiple GIS formats. Such programs include: *

ArcGIS ArcGIS is a family of client, server and online geographic information system (GIS) software developed and maintained by Esri. ArcGIS was first released in 1999 and originally was released as ARC/INFO, a command line based GIS system for mani ...

– Uses GDAL for custom raster formats *Avenza MAPublisher - GIS and mapping tools for Adobe Illustrator. Uses GDAL for coordinate system transformation, format reading & writing, geometry operations, & unit conversion. *Avenza Geographic Imager - Spatial imaging tools for Adobe Photoshop. Uses GDAL for coordinate system transformation, format reading & writing, & unit conversion. *Avenza Maps - iOS &

Android mobile Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of deve ...

mapping application. Uses GDAL to read metadata information for geospatial maps / data to transform them to

WGS84 The World Geodetic System (WGS) is a standard used in cartography, geodesy, and satellite navigation including GPS. The current version, WGS 84, defines an Earth-centered, Earth-fixed coordinate system and a geodetic datum, and also desc ...

for offline navigation. * Biosphere3D – Open source landscape scenery globe * Biotop Invent * Cadwork * ENVI – Remote Sensing software *ERDAS APOLLO - Image Server and remote sensing geo-services *ERDAS GeoCompressor - Image compression to ECW and JP2 formats * Geoconcept integrated GDAL in its 7.1 release * FWTools – A cross-platform open source GIS software bundle compiled by Frank Warmerdam * gdaltokmz – A Python module translating from GDAL-supported raster graphics formats to the Google Earth KMZ format * GeoDjango – Django's support for GIS-enabled databases * GeoDMS - A framework for building spatial calculation models.
GeoView Pro
– iOS mobile mapping application * Google Earth – A virtual globe and world imaging program * GRASS GIS * gvSIG * JMap * MangoMap * MapServer *MS4W - MapServer for Windows, a widely popular installer for the MapServer community, using GDAL for data access. *

MapWindow GIS MapWindow GIS is a lightweight open-source GIS (mapping) desktop application and set of programmable mapping components. History MapWindow GIS and its associated MapWinGIS ActiveX Control were originally developed by Daniel P. Ames and a team of ...

- Open Source C++ based geographic information system,

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, and application programmer interface * Merkaartor * NASA

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, an open-source software package for photogrammetry * World Wind Java – NASA's open source virtual globe and world imaging technology *

(OSSIM) – Libraries and applications used to process imagery, maps, terrain, and vector data * OpenEV – Geospatial toolkit and a frontend to that toolkit; to display

georeference Georeferencing means that the internal coordinate system of a map or aerial photo image can be related to a geographic coordinate system. The relevant coordinate transforms are typically stored within the image file (GeoPDF and GeoTIFF are examples) ...

d images and

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § ...

data * Orfeo toolbox – A satellite image processing library * QGIS * R – An open source statistical software with extensions for spatial data analysis. * SAGA GIS – A cross-platform open source GIS software * TopoQuest – Internet topographic map viewer *

Rolta Geomatica software Rolta, is an Indian multinational technology company, headquartered in Mumbai, India. The company focuses on IT solutions, Business Intelligence and BigData Analytics, Geographic data and information and Engineering. The company is listed o ...

Supported raster data formats

As of version 2.2.3, GDAL/OGR provides at least partial support for 154 raster and 93 vector geospatial data formats. A subset of data formats is supported to ensure the ability to directly create files and georeferencing them with the default GDAL compiling options. Here follows the list of data formats whose support is, by default, compiled to allow creation and georeferencing.

Supported vector data formats

GDAL supports a variety of vector data formats as see
here
It is extensible as well.

References

;Notes * *

External links

*{{Official website
OSGeo project homepage
C++ libraries Cross-platform software Data structures libraries and frameworks Free computer libraries Free GIS software GIS file formats Software using the MIT license