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I'm looking for open source alternatives to ArcCatalog. The software should run on both Win and Linux and support the usual file formats (shp, kml, gml, ...) and databases (especially PostGIS, additional SpatiaLite support would be great). I'd like to browse and search for datasets and probably rename (renaming all parts of a shapefile at once) and delete files.

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4 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

For a basic viewer, I've been playing with WxGIS Catalog, which does the basics nicely but could use some fleshing out for more complex use cases. There's also RasterCatalog for QGIS, but as the name states, its only for rasters. On OS X, try GISlook, but none of these look to handle the spatial database engines directly.

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That WxGIS looks interesting - thanks. Id assume that it would not be possible for any sort of OpenSource utility to hook into things like ArcGIS Server or Geodatabases – Simon Aug 30 '10 at 9:15
Thanks for the reference to WxGIS Catalog. Nice looking project that I haven't run into yet. – DavidF Aug 30 '10 at 13:49
WxGIS looks good. No need to first import the data, that's a big plus. But I couldn't find how to display the associated metadata. – underdark♦ Aug 30 '10 at 15:52
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gdal/ogr supports ESRI SDE connections, with some work, and ESRI personal geodatabases. See gdal.org/frmt_sde.html, gdal.org/ogr/drv_pgeo.html. So yes it is possible to add some ESRI formats to an open source spatial catalog browsing utility. – matt wilkie♦ Aug 30 '10 at 19:30
up vote 4 down vote

GeoApt Data Browser looks quite promising, but I haven't yet managed to make it run on Windows. The big advantage over wxGIS Catalog for me would be that you can access the dataset's metadata.

Update: As @dassouki mentioned above, there is also a new QGIS Browser which supports raster, vector and WMSS data. You can drag and drop layers to QGIS from there.

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up vote 1 down vote

http://thuban.intevation.org/

supports .shp and postgis

Has and API and supports Add-ons for extra tools (for .kml, spatiaLite etc)

It's NOT a GIS but a Interactive Geographic Data Viewer.

"Thuban is extensible and multi-platform (GNU/Linux, Windows, ...). It is Free Software under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL)"

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Nice viewer but not a catalog. – underdark♦ Aug 30 '10 at 20:34
Did you get an ArcCatlog substitute yet ? – Senthil Feb 14 '12 at 4:58
up vote 2 down vote

Udig may have what you are looking for. Runs on Windows, Linux, and mac. Supports all the standard data formats, and able to browse/rename datasets.

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Seems to me that uDig is a full sized GIS and not really a catalog. How would I browse my geodatasets? I don't want to load them all into a project. I could do that with any GIS. – underdark♦ Aug 30 '10 at 13:45
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When you run the software there is a pane that acts as a catalog browser. You do not have to load the geodata into a map project, you can just use the pane to browse data. – Zachary Aug 30 '10 at 14:38
I found the catalog. Is there some preview functionality? Also, is there a way to avoid having to import all files into the catalog first? – underdark♦ Aug 30 '10 at 15:20

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