Seeking open source alternative to File Geodatabase

Question

I would like to use geopandas to work on a large dataset which is provided in Esri's file geodatabase format. I would like to be able to read and write this dataset, unfortunately there are still important difficulties which remain with fiona being able to read FileGDB format. Here is proof:

• https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/issues/565
• https://github.com/geopandas/geopandas/issues/868

I could of course convert everything in the FileGDB to shapefiles, but shapefiles have important limitations when compared with feature classes.

I am looking for a file format which supports the following:

• Read/writeable by geopandas
• Which can handle large datasets containing 10's of millions of records
• Not subject to shapefile limitations
• Easily convertible to and from an Esri FileGDB

Anyone know of an alternative?

Answer 1

Yer Geopackages are an SQLite based spatial database and are much more capable than shapefiles.

Have a read here about how to use them with geopandas and fiona https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56165069/can-geopandas-get-a-geopackages-or-other-vector-file-all-layers

Converting to ESRI FileGDB will probably need to be done using ArcPy (or ESRI based python libraries) as its proprietary tech. Arcpy will support Geopackages though, and there is a FeatureClass to FeatureClass conversion that will do the job with a Geopackage input.