Topic: Supporting the Spatial Data Transfer Standard in ARC/INFO

E-Mail:dbeddoe@esri.com

Web: http://www.esri.com

SDTS White Paper on line, SDTS-Supporting the Spatial Data Transfer Standard in ARC/INFO, http://www.esri.com/base/common/whitepapers/ai_lit.html

1) Why SDTS? ARC/INFO SDTS encoder/decoder is a lossless information translator. SDTS is a good idea because it saves the vendor from writing many custom converters. SDTS is supported by ESRI through the development and continued enhancement of the ARC/INFO SDTS utilities.

2) What is needed to enhance the capabilities of the SDTS encoder/decoder? Support for double precision coverages was at the top of the list. There is a need to expand the amount of characters necessary for naming SDTSEXPORT files. Right now the limit is four characters which restrict naming multiple files. There were requests for the SDTS utilities to be added to ARCVIEW from the audience.

3) ARC/INFO is designed as a robust GIS toolkit that can perform a wide variety of functions. On the other hand, ARCVIEW is an extension of ARC/INFO that contains a user friendly interface and allows for easy queries and analysis. ARCVIEW does not contain the editing and cannot structure topology.

4) SDTS received acknowledgment from the Open GIS Consortium as an accepted standard. Continued development of other profiles will prompt development of software to encode/decode these profiles. The Topological Vector Profile, Point Profile, and the Raster Profile are either developed or under development and will require software vendors to create encoders/decoders for new profiles to succeed. At this time very few users are identified and limited amounts of spatial data are available in SDTS format.