Comparison of Vector Formats (GIS)

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of vector GIS file formats. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General Information

Design Authority

Software license

Geography Markup Language GML

Open Geospatial Consortium

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AutoCAD DXF

Shapefile

ESRI

Simple Features

MapInfo TAB format

National Transfer Format

TIGER

Cartesian coordinate system

Vector Product Format

GeoMedia

Feature Types

Point

Multipoint

Line

Polyline

Polygon

Multipolygon

Shapefile{{cite paper |author=ESRI |title=ESRI Shapefile technical description |date=July, 1998 |url=http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf |pages=4

accessdate=2010-25-01 }}

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  • Geography Markup Language (GML) - XML based open standard (by OpenGIS) for GIS data exchange
  • AutoCAD DXF - Contour elevation plots in AutoCAD DXF format
  • Shapefile - ESRI's open, hybrid vector data format using SHP, SHX and DBF files
  • Simple Features - Open Geospatial Consortium specification for vector data
  • MapInfo TAB format - MapInfo's vector data format using TAB, DAT, ID and MAP files
  • National Transfer Format (NTF) - National Transfer Format (mostly used by the UK Ordnance Survey)
  • TIGER - Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
  • Cartesian coordinate system (XYZ) - Simple point cloud
  • Vector Product Format - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)'s format of vectored data for large geographic databases.
  • GeoMedia - Intergraph's Microsoft Access based format for spatial vector storage.
  • ISFC - Intergraph's MicroStation based CAD solution attaching vector elements to a relational Microsoft Access database
  • Personal Geodatabase - ESRI's closed, integrated vector data storage strategy using Microsoft's Access MDB format
  • File Geodatabase - ESRI's geodatabase format, stored as folders in a file system.
  • Coverage - ESRI's closed, hybrid vector data storage strategy. Legacy ArcGIS Workstation / ArcInfo format with reduced support in ArcGIS Desktop lineup
  • Spatial Data File - Autodesk's high-performance geodatabase format, native to MapGuide
  • GeoJSON - a lightweight format based on JSON, used by many open source GIS packages