Comparison of GIS vector file formats

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of vector GIS file formats. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General Information

	Design Authority	Software license
Geography Markup Language GML	Open Geospatial Consortium	?
AutoCAD DXF
Shapefile	ESRI
Simple Features
MapInfo TAB format
National Transfer Format
TIGER
Cartesian coordinate system
Vector Product Format
GeoMedia

Feature Types

	Point	Multipoint	Line	Polyline	Polygon	Multipolygon
Shapefile^[1]	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	No

Geography Markup Language (GML) - XML based open standard (by OpenGIS) for GIS data exchange
AutoCAD DXF - Contour elevation plots in AutoCAD DXF format
Shapefile - ESRI's open, hybrid vector data format using SHP, SHX and DBF files
Simple Features - Open Geospatial Consortium specification for vector data
MapInfo TAB format - MapInfo's vector data format using TAB, DAT, ID and MAP files
National Transfer Format (NTF) - National Transfer Format (mostly used by the UK Ordnance Survey)
TIGER - Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
Cartesian coordinate system (XYZ) - Simple point cloud
Vector Product Format - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)'s format of vectored data for large geographic databases.
GeoMedia - Intergraph's Microsoft Access based format for spatial vector storage.
ISFC - Intergraph's MicroStation based CAD solution attaching vector elements to a relational Microsoft Access database
Personal Geodatabase - ESRI's closed, integrated vector data storage strategy using Microsoft's Access MDB format
File Geodatabase - ESRI's geodatabase format, stored as folders in a file system.
Coverage - ESRI's closed, hybrid vector data storage strategy. Legacy ArcGIS Workstation / ArcInfo format with reduced support in ArcGIS Desktop lineup
Spatial Data File - Autodesk's high-performance geodatabase format, native to MapGuide
GeoJSON - a lightweight format based on JSON, used by many open source GIS packages

References

^ ESRI (July, 1998). "ESRI Shapefile technical description" (PDF): 4. Retrieved 2010-25-01. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

[1] ESRI (July, 1998). "ESRI Shapefile technical description" (PDF): 4. Retrieved 2010-25-01. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

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