A GIS file format is a standard for encoding geographical information into a computer file, as a specialized type of file format for use in geographic information systems (GIS) and other geospatial applications. Since the 1970s, dozens of formats have been created based on various data models for various purposes. They have been created by government mapping agencies, GIS software vendors, standards bodies such as the Open Geospatial Consortium, informal user communities, and even individual developers.
GeoTIFF is a public domain metadata standard which allows georeferencing information to be embedded within a TIFF file. The potential additional information includes map projection, coordinate systems, ellipsoids, datums, and everything else necessary to establish the exact spatial reference for the file. The GeoTIFF format is fully compliant with TIFF 6.0, so software incapable of reading and interpreting the specialized metadata will still be able to open a GeoTIFF format file.
A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.
Sol Katz was an American software developer who pioneered geospatial computer software and left behind a large body of work in the form of computer applications and format specifications while at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This early archive provided both source code and applications freely available to the community, including the Windows application PC-MOSS, where MOSS is the earliest known Open Source Geographic Information System. Katz was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers.
A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 1999 for serving georeferenced map images over the Internet. These images are typically produced by a map server from data provided by a GIS database.
The shapefile format is a geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as a mostly open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other GIS software products. The shapefile format can spatially describe vector features: points, lines, and polygons, representing, for example, water wells, rivers, and lakes. Each item usually has attributes that describe it, such as name or temperature.
Java Unified Mapping Program (JUMP) is a Java based vector and raster GIS and programming framework. Current development continues under the OpenJUMP name.
QGIS is a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system (GIS) application that supports viewing, editing, printing, and analysis of geospatial data.
The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It may also be built with a variety of useful command line interface utilities for data translation and processing. Projections and transformations are supported by the PROJ library.
Mapbender is a graduated project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. It was awarded OGC web site of the month in 2008. It is used by PortalU and several federal states to implement the INSPIRE regulation. Many municipalities use Mapbender as City Map Services and it is used as the mapping framework for online cycle route planners.
JTS Topology Suite is an open-source Java software library that provides an object model for Euclidean planar linear geometry together with a set of fundamental geometric functions. JTS is primarily intended to be used as a core component of vector-based geomatics software such as geographical information systems. It can also be used as a general-purpose library providing algorithms in computational geometry.
MapServer is an open-source development environment for building spatially enabled internet applications, built in the C language, and is widely known as one of the fastest Web mapping engines available. It can run as a CGI program or via MapScript which supports several programming languages. MapServer can access hundreds of data formats, any raster or vector format supported by GDAL, and reprojections on-the-fly are handled by PROJ. MapServer was originally developed by Steve Lime, then working at the University of Minnesota — so, it was previously referred to as "UMN MapServer", to distinguish it from commercial "map servers"; today it is commonly referred to as just "MapServer", and is maintained by the MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC). MapServer was originally developed with support from NASA, which needed a way to make its satellite imagery available to the public.
OpenLayers is an open-source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers as slippy maps. It provides an API for building rich web-based geographic applications similar to Google Maps and Bing Maps.
Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using maps, usually created through geographic information systems (GIS) on the World Wide Web. A web map or an online map is both served and consumed, thus, web mapping is more than just web cartography, it is a service where consumers may choose what the map will show.
In computer science, Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) is a software library for processing images from Earth observation satellites.
Mapnik is an open-source mapping toolkit for desktop and server based map rendering, written in C++. Artem Pavlenko, the original developer of Mapnik, set out with the explicit goal of creating beautiful maps by employing the sub-pixel anti-aliasing of the Anti-Grain Geometry (AGG) library. Mapnik now also has a Cairo rendering backend. For handling common software tasks such as memory management, file system access, regular expressions, and XML parsing, Mapnik utilizes the Boost C++ libraries. An XML file can be used to define a collection of mapping objects that determine the appearance of a map, or objects can be constructed programmatically in C++, Python, and Node.js.
SpatiaLite is a spatial extension to SQLite, providing vector geodatabase functionality. It is similar to PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, and SQL Server with spatial extensions, although SQLite/SpatiaLite aren't based on client-server architecture: they adopt a simpler personal architecture. i.e. the whole SQL engine is directly embedded within the application itself: a complete database simply is an ordinary file which can be freely copied and transferred from one computer/OS to a different one without any special precaution.
GIS Live DVD is a type of the thematic Live CD containing GIS/RS applications and related tutorials, and sample data sets. The general sense of a GIS Live DVD is to demonstrate the power of FLOSS GIS and encourage users to start on FLOSS GIS. However, a disc can be used for GIS data processing and training, too. A disc usually includes some selected Linux-based or Wine (software)-enabled Windows applications for GIS and Remote Sensing use. Using this disc the end users can execute GIS functions to get experience in free and open source software solutions or solve some simple business operations. The set-up and the operating behaviour of the applications can also be studied prior to building real FLOSS GIS-based systems. Recently a LiveDVD image is stored and booted from USB.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization for geospatial content and location-based services, sensor web and Internet of Things, GIS data processing and data sharing. It originated in 1994 and involves more than 500 commercial, governmental, nonprofit and research organizations in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open standards.
CARTO is a software as a service (SaaS) cloud computing platform that provides GIS, web mapping, and spatial data science tools. The company is positioned as a Location Intelligence platform due to tools with an aptitude for data analysis and visualization that do not require previous GIS or development experience.
