What is the difference between shapefile and geodatabase

ADCi Blog. Shapefile vs. February 2, Key Considerations Likely the most significant difference between the two storage choices is that the. Choosing Wisely At the end of the day, user preference has little to do with determining which spatial data storage format is used. Figuring out which file type is the right choice depends on three things: How you want to use the data Your own GIS experience Your project requirements Aligning your needs with the appropriate format based on these fundamentals may require a discussion with experts who have experience with both.

Coverages can be a bit more complicated to work with when you are dealing with 3D data for example modeling a bridge that has an upper side and a lower side right below because the algorithms that we used to use to deal with them were inherently meant for 2D planar graph math. So why did we move away from it?

That would take a longer answer, but perhaps we should explain a bit more what made ESRI Shapefiles popular first. Along came the Shapefile. The attributes leveraged DBF files , so there were already many libraries that implemented a big part of the spec.

There was no concept of "clean", which meant that each individual geometry only had to worry about representing itself without taking in consideration the geometries around them or that they intersected.

This meant that we did not have to do any complicated math to make sure that a shapefile was correct unlike the coverage counterpart. Have multiple geometries that cross each other? Sure why not. Two points on top of each other? Be my guest. Sometimes, the arguably "best" format is not the one that wins, but the one that gets adopted. If a format is easy to implement, it has better chances to be adopted than a complicated one.

That was the Shapefile. All of a sudden you had several libraries open source and proprietary and software vendors that supported it. So all was great. I believe Geodatabases are one of the most misunderstood geospatial data stores.

People usually think of them as just "a geospatial format". Instead of repeating what my answer was then, I welcome you to read that first. I'll wait :. Now that you read that answer and know what a Geodatabase is, I can expand a bit more on that answer.

At the time, there was a lot of research optimizing SQL and writing query optimizers that leveraged indexes, column stores, etc there still is. By building the Geodatabase on top of a SQL datastore, we can leverage all that research for free. We only need to concentrate on the geospatial concepts, and as the SQL data stores get better, the Geodatabase gets better, too, for free. Not a bad proposition huh? Nowadays, there are several specifications for geospatial data that come out.

The jury is still out there on what is going to replace these technologies if anything. Nevertheless, if you are interested in this topic, I recommend reading the answer to a questions asked here in GIS.

SE some years back: "Are there any attempts to replace the shape file". The effective limit before performance degrades is typically between and MB per Access database file. Fully supported across all DBMSs; includes cross-database replication, updates using checkout and check-in, and historical archiving. Only supported as a geodatabase for clients who post updates using checkout and check-in and as a client to which updates can be sent using one-way replication. You can optionally store data in a read-only compressed format to reduce storage requirements.

Often used as an attribute table manager via Microsoft Access. Users like the string handling for text attributes.

Learn about creating geodatabases. File and personal geodatabases, which are freely available to all users of ArcGIS for Desktop Basic , Standard , and Advanced , are designed to support the full information model of the geodatabase, which comprises topologies, raster catalogs, network datasets, terrain datasets, address locators, and so on.

File and personal geodatabases are designed to be edited by a single user and do not support geodatabase versioning. With a file geodatabase, it is possible to have more than one editor at the same time provided they are editing in different feature datasets, stand-alone feature classes, or tables. The file geodatabase was a new geodatabase type released in ArcGIS 9. Its goals are to do the following:. Personal geodatabases have been used in ArcGIS since their initial release in version 8.

They support geodatabases that are limited in size to 2 GB or less. However, the effective database size is smaller, somewhere between and MB, before the database performance starts to slow down. Personal geodatabases are also only supported on the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Users like the table operations they can perform using Microsoft Access on personal geodatabases. Many users really like the text-handling capabilities in Microsoft Access for working with attribute values. ArcGIS will continue to support personal geodatabases for numerous purposes. However, in most cases, Esri recommends using file geodatabases for their scalability in size, significantly faster performance, and cross-platform use. The file geodatabase is ideal for working with file-based datasets for GIS projects, personal use, and in small workgroups.

It has strong performance and scales well to hold extremely large data volumes without requiring the use of a DBMS. Therefore Personal Geodatabases can be opened directly in Microsoft Access, but the entire geodatabase can only have 2 GB of storage. To organize your data into themes you can create Feature Datasets within a geodatabase.

Feature datasets store Feature Classes which are the equivalent to shapefiles with the same coordinate system. Like shapefiles, users can create points, lines, and polygons with feature classes; feature classes also have the ability to create annotation, and dimension features. In order to create advanced datasets such as add a network dataset, a geometric network, a terrain dataset, a parcel fabric, or run topology on an existing layer in ArcGIS, you will need to create a Feature Dataset.

You will not be able to access any files of a File geodatabase in Windows Explorer. Thanks, Jena. This was very helpful. For my project, it was recommended to me that I use a file system outside a geodatabase to make it easier to transfer specific files to other people.

However, I have many shapefiles and I find it challenging in that ArcMap always wants to save my files in a Default geodatabase when I run a tool.