I received broken (incomplete) shapefiles the other day. This happens sometimes and it costs only minor delays if I know the sender. It is more difficult if I find some geodata online with the download option “download as shapefile”. It seems like a lot of the data that is available as part of the EU “opendata policy” is of questionable quality in terms “clean, proper and consistent” files. I never experienced this with public available data from the US.

There are so many filetypes and databases out there. Let us have a closer look at GDAL/OGR. They list:

Currently, we have two major options:

  1. We could use databases such as PostGIS or SpatiaLite. If we are working with more organic (less structured) data Neo4j Spatial might be useful.
  2. We could use single files such shapefiles or geotiff.

Let us be honest: using proper databases for data exchange can be quite a pain in the ass. Hence, single files are okay. It is 2018 now. Why is it still not possible to make the exchange of shapefiles and geotiffs fool-proof.

Maybe GeoPackage helps solving this once and for all.