Speculations on the File Geodatabase API

At the ESRI Developer Summit there was news of the File Geodatabase (FGDB) API. Based on the tweets from the summit it appears:

• The API will be C++ only

• API works on Windows and Unix/Linux (specifically RedHat, Solaris, SuSE) operating systems

• Rudimentary support only—features such as annotation, relationships, topologies, etc. are lacking

Since ESRI is releasing a targeted API and a not a specification, support for Mac OS X is out of the question.

How well open source GIS applications will be able to support the FGDB (if at all) remains to be seen.

The other question is: Will the API be made freely available or will it require an ArcGIS license?

Will the release of the FGDB API be the “Shapefile-killer”? I have my doubts…