Question: best way to store simple point data: shapefile or GML
Today, a colleague asked the following question:
What is the best way to store simple point data: a coordinate and a value. The file format has to be as universally deployable as possible and it has to be future proof. What file format is best qualified to do this?
My opinion is that shapefile is best qualified to do the job: it’s simple, you can access it in any GIS application you can imagine, and it’s open. It’s not an ISO standard, like GML, but the specifications are know and open (www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf)
But apparently I’m the only one that sees it this way, all my colleagues suggested to use GML or even geoJson. But I have some remarks against these.
First, I’m a heavy supporter of GML, but not as a way to store data. In my opinion the most recent version of GML (3.2.1) still has to prove that it’s future proof (although it looks like it is, the standard hasn’t changed since 2007). And even if it’s future proof, not all possible GIS applications currently support GML. In my opinion, GML is more a exchange format, it should be used as a way to exchange the data, not to keep the source data in.
Second: What if the standard does change, than you have to convert all you’re data to the newest format, in order to be as compatible and bugfree as possible. This doesn’t seem very convenient to me…
Third: GeoJSON: in my opinion, this should only be used as an interchange format between a server, and a browser. If you want to store data in this format, you’d better use just a plain csv file for this purpose. Next argument is that not many applications support geojson as input.
Anyway, what do you think, what is the best solution for this problem? Feel free to comment.
Just store it as a csv. You can’t be more future proof then that. If you need to visualize the points then shapefile is a great alternative. So I guess I just agree with you