With QGIS 3.28.1 being released you get this one new thing that I thought I’d never see. Way back in June (2022) this popped up on twitter:
Yes – GDAL 3.6 would have the ability to edit ESRI File Based Geodatabases. Back in 2014 GDAL gained the ability to read an ESRI File Based Geodatabase without the ESRI driver. You couldn’t edit. Eight years later here we are.
If you’re running windows and have upgraded to 3.28.1 you’re good to go. I’m on linux and will have to wait a bit (or Compile QGIS) to get the functionality. In order to have a talk ready for FOSS4G Nashville and for this I actually downloaded a Windows 10 iso and booted it up. I didn’t know I could run it for one month with out a license key.
So cool things with ESRI’s File Based Geodatabase and QGIS 3.28. Occasionally I have to Grab some Nation Hydro Dataset data and I can see Feature Datasets. Which means if someone gives me a ESRI FGDB I can see how they organized their data.
I can now make an ESRI FGDB by right clicking in the Browser in a directory. Once created I can right click on the File Geodatabase and create tables and the new table dialog is the same as you see in Geopackages. Consistency is a good thing.
From here – you just drag and drop data from either the layers panel or from within the browser panel if you want to move existing data over. You can also Edit which is a bit hard to show up here. That’s a big deal because we don’t have to rely on the ESRI drivers to make that happen.
One thing I did notice is there is no export option for existing data into a ESRI FGDB. I’m glad there isn’t – Getting this far to working with a proprietary format is enough. Not that I’m against making this easier I’m more for “use a non-proprietary format to work with your data”.
