SpatiaLite is a spatial extension to SQLite, providing vector geodatabase functionality. It is similar to PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, and SQL Server with spatial extensions, although SQLite/SpatiaLite aren't based on client-server architecture: they adopt a simpler personal architecture. i.e. the whole SQL engine is directly embedded within the application itself: a complete database simply is an ordinary file which can be freely copied and transferred from one computer/OS to a different one without any special precaution.
Developer(s) | Alessandro Furieri |
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Initial release | March 21, 2008 |
Stable release | 5.1.0
/ August 4, 2023 |
Repository |
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Written in | spatialite-gui: (C++, wxWidgets)[1] |
Operating system | Linux, MS-Windows, macOS, POSIX compliant systems |
Type | Geographic information system |
License | MPL GPL LGPL tri-license |
Website | https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/ |
SpatiaLite extends SQLite's existing spatial support to cover the OGC's SFS specification.[2] It isn't necessary to use SpatiaLite to manage spatial data in SQLite, which has its own implementation of R-tree indexes and geometry types. But SpatiaLite is needed for advanced spatial queries and to support multiple map projections. SpatiaLite is provided natively for Linux and Windows as a software library as well several utilities that incorporate the SpatiaLite library. These utilities include command line tools that extend SQLite's own with spatial macros, a graphical GUI for manipulating Spatialite databases and their data, and a simple desktop GIS tool for browsing data.
As it is a single binary file, SpatiaLite is also used as a GIS vector format to exchange geospatial data.
SpatiaLite supports several open standards from the OGC and has been listed as a reference implementation for the proposed GeoPackage standard.[20]