Intro to GDAL/OGR

[alukach]

Intro to GDAL/OGR:

• What is it?
• What can it do?
• How do I get it?
• How do I use it?

[albykov]

+1
have some experience in arcpy tools development, but really interested to convert most of the tools to gdal/ogr and share it

[alukach]

I've used GDAL and OGR with a few projects, I feel like I know enough to stumble my way through a project.

I think some import topics would be:

• What's the difference between GDAL and OGR? (hint: raster vs vector)
• Which data formats are supported by GDAL and OGR. How do "drivers" work?
• Quick run-through of GDAL tools and OGR tools and what you can do with them (probably just focus on the popular ones).
• How to interact with the tools (Python & CLI)
• Quick illustration of how to install it on Mac (homebrew?), Windows (OSGeo4W?), or Ubuntu (apt-get) (this probably wouldn't go well in a live environment as it would take a while, maybe could result in a break out session)

In terms of live demos, I could show the following:

• Use gdalinfo to get an idea of what's going on with a raster file.
• Use ogrinfo to get an idea of what's going on with a vector file.
• Write a Python script to generate hillshaded, colored, contoured thumbnails of DEMs (GeoTiff).
• Use ogr2ogr to import a Shapefile into a PostGIS (and then maybe visualize it in MapboxStudio or something)

@albykov I think it would also be super interesting to see how someone could take their existing workflow (using arcpy) and convert it to a GDAL workflow. Is that what you're suggesting?

[albykov]

@alukach yes, I think it will be great to make a real example when you can create a tool not using arcpy and use it in ArcGIS :-)

As for topics I think:
Topic 3 (Quick Run... )- It will be great to create mindmap\s and group it similarly ArcGIS Tools (I mean, it can help to swith for ERSI trained professionals). At least have some map of classes :-)
Topic 5 (How to interact) - I am interested to be able to compile GDAL\OGR easy (using installer) and second option - clean\light (have only gdal\ogr libraries)

[jbants]

Hi Guys,
If this is still a topic people are interested in, I would be willing to put together a presentation and a tutorial/lab.