Cartodb: Importer should support File Geodatabase

[pramsey]

File Geodatabase (fgbd) is now a very common format in the professional GIS world: folks building geodata will likely have these files lying around their desks. OGR supports reading file geodatabase as of 1.11 using the "OpenFileGeodatabase" driver. FGDB files can contain multiple tables, so one FGDB import might create multiple tables in CartoDB.

FGDB can also contain non-spatial tables that relate to the spatial ones (commonly, FGDB data is better normalized than Shape data). They can also contain hundreds of files. In general, being able to select which tables get imported will be the next feature requested once the basic format support is added.

[andrewbt]

+1000 would recommend to a friend

[ztephm]

It's being requested by users in S/B: 5467978

[jaimecartodb]

Several big clients asking for this. +1

[nygeog]

• In GDAL - ESRI File Geodatabase (OpenFileGDB) (Available in GDAL >= 1.11) (http://www.gdal.org/drv_openfilegdb.html)
• Plus the US Census Bureau publishes FGDB https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-data.html
• Also, from time to time, File GDB and Personal Geodatabase are in State and City data portals.
• It's supported in QGIS (http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/26285/file-geodatabase-gdb-support-in-qgis)
• OSGEO4W supports it: (http://lab.usgin.org/groups/best-practices-usgin-web-service-hosting/convert-file-gdb-postgis-database)
• ? (https://github.com/rouault/dump_gdbtable/wiki/FGDB-Spec)

File Geodatabase is a really robust format for creating GIS data, w/ domains, and topology rules, it is really great for creating new data. Certain industries in GIS really love the database schema's and guidelines w/ FGDB put forth by Esri and other industry leaders. Also, it can hold a huge amount of data.

[xavijam]

There has been no activity on this issue for more several months. We are closing it. If you think this still needs to be addressed please open a new issue.

[pramsey]

@inigomedina this should be low-hanging fruit now, since OGR supports FGDW read natively now, no extra libraries required

[inigomedina]

Sounds great @pramsey.

In terms of user experience, it would be a good feature, for sure.

How do you feel about it in terms of our codebase? Could we go directly for an implementation of this? Would we need to prepare anything previously?

[pramsey]

The current importer GDAL version seems to be pegged at 2.1 (would be nicer if it was 2.2.3, but hey) and OpenFGDB driver dates back to 1.11 so from a core infrastructure point-of-view, everything should already be in place. The same logic that can handle a GPKG import, which is also a multi-layer format, should be able to handle an FGDB import.

[inigomedina]

Ok. Sounds good.

Do we have any kind of doc/spec describing this feature?

[pramsey]

Not to my knowledge. IMO anything more than "support FGDB import, make it work the same as GPKG" would be overkill.

[nygeog]

@pramsey awesome. Glad for this integration, makes Carto more enterprise-ready :) cc @andrewbt

[ramiroaznar]

Closing in favor of https://github.com/CartoDB/cartodb/issues/10730