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GDAL framework and plugins

dromagnoli edited this page Mar 14, 2013 · 8 revisions

Main Features

The core module of the project is the gdalframework module which provide a bridge between the Java Image I/O framework and the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library via SWIG's generated Java bindings to provide support for a reach set of data formats.

Here below a brief list of the current supported formats is provided. Note that for each of these formats an Image I/O-Ext plugin is provided which integrates into the standard Image I/O SPI mechanism.

GDAL Supported Formats

The following list represents the available ImageIO-Ext plugin as well as the type of support (read, write, both) and the license of the plugin

  • Arc/Info ASCII Grid (Read support) / LGPL License
  • Arc/Info Binary Grid (Read support) / LGPL License
  • DOQ1 (Read support) / LGPL License
  • DOQ2 (Read support) / LGPL License
  • DTED (Read support) / LGPL License
  • ECW (Read support) / LGPL License
  • EHdr (Read support) / LGPL License
  • ENVI Hdr (Read support) / LGPL License
  • ENVISAT (Read support) / LGPL License
  • Erdas Imagine HFA (Read support) / LGPL License
  • GeoTIFF (Read/Write support) / LGPL License
  • JPEG (Read support) / LGPL License
  • JPEG2000 based on Kakadu (Read/write support) / LGPL License
  • JPEG2000 based on MrSID (Read/write support) / LGPL License
  • JPEG2000 based on ECW (Read/write support) / LGPL License
  • MrSID (Read support) / LGPL License
  • NITF (Read support) / LGPL License
  • HDF4 (Read support) / LGPL License

Installation

GDAL_DATA directory

Meaning

GDAL_DATA is an environment variable used to specify location of supporting files used by GDAL library as well as GDAL and OGR utilities. For instance, in order for OGR and GDAL to properly evaluate EPSG codes you need to have the EPSG support files (so called dictionaries, mostly in CSV format), like gcs.csv and pcs.csv, found in the directory pointed by GDAL_DATA variable. more

How to set it

As you might imagine a proper installation of the the GDAL_DATA files is crucial. To perform such installation download the GDAL CRS Definitions zip archive from the corresponding version of the GDAL native libs in the downloads site and extract them to a folder on your disk; then make sure to set a GDAL_DATA environment variable to the folder where you have extracted the files.

For additional information please, check this link.

Native libraries installation

Windows

If you are on Windows, make sure that the GDAL DLL files are part of your PATH(by adding an entry to the PATH environment variable referring to the folder where the native libs have been deployed).

Notice that multiple DLLs versions available on different location on your PATH's machine may cause loading issues. Usually, you can extract DLLs on your JDK/bin folder.

When done, you could run "gdalinfo --version" to check the native libs installation.

Linux

If you are on Linux, make sure to set the **LD_LIBRARY_PATH **environment variable to refer to the folder where the SOs have been extracted. (Typical uses are extracting SOs on your java JDK in the /jre/lib/i386 for Linux32 or /jre/lib/amd64 for linux64).

When done, you could "cd" to the folder where they have been extracted and run "./gdalinfo --version" to check the native libs installation.

Plugins installation on Windows

(Quoting this page):

Plugins are one way you can add support for format drivers without embedding object code that links to auxiliary libraries that can cause linking issues (usually licensing related). Currently, three drivers support building as plugins:

  • MrSID
  • Oracle Spatial (raster and vector)
  • ArcSDE (raster and vector)
  • ECW

To allow **GDAL **to find its plugin drivers you will need to explicitly set the GDAL_DRIVER_PATH environment variable to point to where the driver DLLs reside. In our binaries downloads for Windows we have provided the plugins as convenient installers but still, you shall install them in the right place and set the environmental variable as above.