EVOLUTION-MANAGER

Edit File: drv_vrt.html

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<title>Virtual Format</title>
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<h1>Virtual Format</h1>

OGR Virtual Format is a driver that transforms features read from other
drivers based on criteria specified in an XML control file. It is primarily
used to derive spatial layers from flat tables with spatial information in
attribute columns. It can also be used to associate coordinate system
information with a datasource, merge layers from different datasources into
a single data source, or even just to provide an anchor file for access to
non-file oriented datasources.

The virtual files are currently normally prepared by hand.

<h2>Creation Issues</h2>

Before GDAL 1.7.0, the OGR VRT driver was read-only.
Since GDAL 1.7.0, the CreateFeature(), SetFeature() and DeleteFeature() operations
are supported on a layer of a VRT dataset, if the following conditions are met :
<ul>
<li>the VRT dataset is opened in update mode</li>
<li>the underlying source layer supports those operations</li>
<li>the SrcLayer element is used (as opposed to the SrcSQL element)</li>
<li>the FID of the VRT features is the same as the FID of the source features, that
is to say, the FID element is not specified</li>
</ul>

<h1>Virtual File Format</h1>

The root element of the XML control file is OGRVRTDataSource. It has
an OGRVRTLayer (or OGRVRTWarpedLayer or OGRVRTUnionLayer starting
with GDAL 1.10.0) child for each layer in the virtual datasource, and a
Metadata element.

A <a href="http://svn.osgeo.org/gdal/trunk/gdal/data/ogrvrt.xsd">XML schema of the OGR VRT format</a>
is available. Starting with GDAL 1.11, when GDAL is configured with libXML2 support, that
schema will be used to validate the VRT documents. Non-conformities will be reported only as
warnings. That validation can be disabled by setting the GDAL_XML_VALIDATION configuration option to NO.

Metadata (optional): (GDAL &gt;= 2.0) This element contains a list of metadata name/value
pairs associated with the dataset as a whole. It has
&lt;MDI&gt; (metadata item) subelements which have a "key" attribute and the value
as the data of the element. The Metadata element can be repeated multiple times,
in which case it must be accompanied with a "domain" attribute to indicate the
name of the metadata domain.

A OGRVRTLayer element should have a name attribute with the layer name, and may have the
following subelements:

<ul>
<li> SrcDataSource (mandatory): The value is the name of the datasource
that this layer will be derived from. The element may optionally have
a relativeToVRT attribute which defaults to "0", but if "1" indicates
that the source datasource should be interpreted as relative to the virtual
file. This can be any OGR supported dataset, including ODBC, CSV, etc.
The element may also have a shared attribute to control whether the
datasource should be opened in shared mode. Defaults to OFF for SrcLayer use and ON for SrcSQL use.</li>

<li> OpenOptions (optional): (GDAL &gt;= 2.0) This element may list a number of open
options as child elements of the form &lt;OOI key="key_name"&gt;value_name&lt;/OOI&gt;</li>

<li> Metadata (optional): (GDAL &gt;= 2.0) This element contains a list of metadata name/value
pairs associated with the layer as a whole. It has
&lt;MDI&gt; (metadata item) subelements which have a "key" attribute and the value
as the data of the element. The Metadata element can be repeated multiple times,
in which case it must be accompanied with a "domain" attribute to indicate the
name of the metadata domain.
</li>

<li> SrcLayer (optional): The value is the name of the layer on the
source data source from which this virtual layer should be derived. If this
element isn't provided, then the SrcSQL element must be provided.</li>

<li> SrcSQL (optional): An SQL statement to execute to generate the
desired layer result. This should be provided instead of the SrcLayer for
statement derived results. Some limitations may apply for SQL derived
layers. Starting with OGR 1.10, an optional dialect attribute can be specified
on the SrcSQL element to specify which SQL "dialect" should be used :
possible values are currently <a href="ogr_sql.html">OGRSQL</a> or
<a href="ogr_sql_sqlite.html">SQLITE</a>. If dialect is not specified,
the default dialect of the datasource will be used.</li>

<li> FID (optional): Name of the attribute column from which the
FID of features should be derived. If not provided, the FID of the source
features will be used directly. The layer will report the FID column name only
if it is also reported as a regular field. Starting with GDAL 2.0, a "name"
attribute can be specified on the FID element so that the FID column name is
always reported.</li>

<li> Style (optional): Name of the attribute column from which the
style of features should be derived. If not provided, the style of the source
features will be used directly.</li>

<li> GeometryType (optional): The geometry type to be assigned to the
layer.
If not provided it will be taken from the source layer. The value should
be one of "wkbNone", "wkbUnknown", "wkbPoint", "wkbLineString", "wkbPolygon",
"wkbMultiPoint",
"wkbMultiLineString", "wkbMultiPolygon", or "wkbGeometryCollection".
Optionally "25D" may be appended to mark it as including Z coordinates.
Defaults to "wkbUnknown" indicating that any geometry type is allowed.</li>

<li> LayerSRS (optional): The value of this element is the spatial
reference to use for the layer. If not provided, it is inherited from the
source layer. The value may be WKT or any other input that is accepted
by the OGRSpatialReference::SetUserInput() method. If the value is NULL, then
no SRS will be used for the layer.</li>

<li> GeometryField (optional): This element is used to define
how the geometry for features should be derived. 
If not provided the geometry of the source feature is copied directly. 
The type of geometry encoding is indicated with the encoding attribute which may have the
value "WKT", "WKB" or "PointFromColumns". 
If the encoding is "WKT" or "WKB" then the field attribute will have
the name of the field containing the WKT or WKB geometry. 
If the encoding is "PointFromColumns" then the x, y, z and m attributes
will have the names of the columns to be used for the X, Y, Z and M coordinates.
The z and m attributes are optional (m only supported since OGR 2.1.1). 
The optional reportSrcColumn attribute can be used to specify
whether the source geometry fields (the fields set in the field, x, y, z, m attributes) should be reported as fields of the VRT layer. It defaults to TRUE.
If set to FALSE, the source geometry fields will only be used to build the geometry of the features of the VRT layer.</li>

Starting with OGR 1.11, the GeometryField element can be repeated as many times
as necessary to create multiple geometry fields. It accepts a name
attribute (recommended) that will be used to define the VRT geometry field name. When encoding is
not specified, the field attribute will be used to determine the corresponding
geometry field name in the source layer. If neither encoding nor field
are specified, it is assumed that the name of source geometry field is the value
of the name attribute.


Starting with GDAL 2.0, the optional nullable attribute can be used to specify
whether the geometry field is nullable. It defaults to "true".</li>


When several geometry fields are used, the following child elements of GeometryField
can be defined to explicitly set the geometry type, SRS, source region, or extent.
<ul>
<li>GeometryType (optional) : same syntax as OGRVRTLayer-level GeometryType.</li>
<li>SRS (optional) : same syntax as OGRVRTLayer-level LayerSRS (note SRS vs LayerSRS)</li>
<li>SrcRegion (optional) : same syntax as OGRVRTLayer-level SrcRegion</li>
<li>ExtentXMin, ExtentYMin, ExtentXMax and ExtentXMax (optional) :
same syntax as OGRVRTLayer-level elements of same name</li>
</ul>

If no GeometryField element is specified, all the geometry fields of the
source layer will be exposed by the VRT layer. In order not to expose any geometry
field of the source layer, you need to specify OGRVRTLayer-level GeometryType
element to wkbNone.

<li> SrcRegion (optional, from GDAL 1.7.0) : This element is used
to define an initial spatial filter for the source features. This spatial
filter will be combined with any spatial filter explicitly set on the VRT
layer with the SetSpatialFilter() method. The value of the element must be
a valid WKT string defining a polygon. An optional clip attribute
can be set to "TRUE" to clip the geometries to the source region, otherwise
the source geometries are not modified.</li>

<li> Field (optional, from GDAL 1.7.0): One or more attribute fields
may be defined with Field elements. If no Field elements are defined, the
fields of the source layer/sql will be defined on the VRT layer. The Field
may have the following attributes:
<ul>
<li> name (required): the name of the field.
<li> type: the field type, one of "Integer", "IntegerList",
"Real", "RealList", "String", "StringList", "Binary", "Date", "Time",
or "DateTime". Defaults to "String".
<li> subtype: (GDAL &gt;= 2.0) the field subtype, one of "None", "Boolean",
"Int16", "Float32". Defaults to "None".
<li> width: the field width. Defaults to unknown.
<li> precision: the field width. Defaults to zero.
<li> src: the name of the source field to be copied to this one.
Defaults to the value of "name".
<li> nullable (GDAL &gt;= 2.0) can be used to specify
whether the field is nullable. It defaults to "true".</li>
</ul>
</li>

<li> FeatureCount (optional, from GDAL 1.10.0) : This element is used
to define the feature count of the layer (when no spatial or attribute filter is set).
This can be useful on static data, when getting the feature count from the source layer is slow.</li>

<li> ExtentXMin, ExtentYMin, ExtentXMax and ExtentXMax (optional, from GDAL 1.10.0) :
Those elements are used to define the extent of the layer. This can be useful on static data, when
getting the extent from the source layer is slow.</li>

</ul>

A OGRVRTWarpedLayer element (GDAL &gt;= 1.10.0) is used to do on-the-fly reprojection of
a source layer. It may have the following subelements:

<ul>

<li> OGRVRTLayer, OGRVRTWarpedLayer or OGRVRTUnionLayer (mandatory):
the source layer to reproject.</li>

<li> SrcSRS (optional): The value of this element is the spatial
reference to use for the layer before reprojection. If not specified, it is deduced from
the source layer.</li>

<li> TargetSRS (mandatory): The value of this element is the spatial
reference to use for the layer after reprojection. </li>

<li> WarpedGeomFieldName (optional, from GDAL 1.11) : The value of this element
is the geometry field name of the source layer to wrap. If not specified, the first geometry
field will be used. If there are several geometry fields, only the one matching
WarpedGeomFieldName will be warped; the other ones will be untouched.</li>

</ul>

A OGRVRTUnionLayer element (GDAL &gt;= 1.10.0) is used to concatenate the content of source
layers. It should have a name and may have the following subelements:

<ul>

<li> OGRVRTLayer, OGRVRTWarpedLayer or OGRVRTUnionLayer (mandatory and may be repeated):
a source layer to add in the union.</li>

<li> PreserveSrcFID (optional) : may be ON or OFF. If set to ON, the FID from the source layer
will be used, otherwise a counter will be used. Defaults to OFF.</li>

<li> SourceLayerFieldName (optional) : if specified, an additional field (named with
the value of SourceLayerFieldName) will be added in the layer field definition. For each feature,
the value of this field will be set with the name of the layer from which the feature comes from.</li>

<li> GeometryType (optional) : see above for the syntax. If not specified, the geometry type
will be deduced from the geometry type of all source layers.</li>

<li> LayerSRS (optional) : see above for the syntax. If not specified, the SRS will be the
SRS of the first source layer.</li>

<li> FieldStrategy (optional, exclusive with Field or GeometryField) :
may be FirstLayer to use the fields from the first layer found,
Union to use a super-set of all the fields from all source layers, or
Intersection to use a sub-set of all the common fields from all source layers. Defaults to Union.</li>

<li> Field (optional, exclusive with FieldStrategy) : see above for the syntax. Note: the src attribute
is not supported in the context of a OGRVRTUnionLayer element (field names are assumed to be identical).</li>

<li> GeometryField (optional, exclusive with FieldStrategy, GDAL &gt;= 1.11) : the name attribute and
the following sub-elements GeometryType, SRS and Extent[X|Y][Min|Max] are available.</li>

<li> FeatureCount (optional) : see above for the syntax</li>

<li> ExtentXMin, ExtentYMin, ExtentXMax and ExtentXMax (optional) : see above for the syntax</li>

</ul>

<h2>Example: ODBC Point Layer</h2>

In the following example (disease.ovf) the worms table from the ODBC
database DISEASE is used to form a spatial layer. The virtual file
uses the "x" and "y" columns to get the spatial location. It also marks
the layer as a point layer, and as being in the WGS84 coordinate system.

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;

&lt;OGRVRTLayer name="worms"&gt;
        &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;ODBC:DISEASE,worms&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 	&lt;SrcLayer&gt;worms&lt;/SrcLayer&gt;
	&lt;GeometryType&gt;wkbPoint&lt;/GeometryType&gt;
        &lt;LayerSRS&gt;WGS84&lt;/LayerSRS&gt;
	&lt;GeometryField encoding="PointFromColumns" x="x" y="y"/&gt;
    &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;

&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Example: Renaming attributes</h2>

It can be useful in some circumstances to be able to rename the field names
from a source layer to other names. This is particularly true when you want
to transcode to a format whose schema is fixed, such as GPX
(&lt;name&gt;, &lt;desc&gt, etc.). This can be accomplished using
SQL this way:

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="remapped_layer"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;your_source.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;SrcSQL&gt;SELECT src_field_1 AS name, src_field_2 AS desc FROM your_source_layer_name&lt;/SrcSQL&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

This can also be accomplished (from GDAL 1.7.0) using explicit field
definitions:

<pre>
&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="remapped_layer"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;your_source.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;SrcLayer&gt;your_source&lt;/SrcSQL&gt;
 &lt;Field name="name" src="src_field_1" /&gt;
 &lt;Field name="desc" src="src_field_2" type="String" width="45" /&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Example: Transparent spatial filtering (GDAL &gt;= 1.7.0)</h2>

The following example will only return features from the source layer that
intersect the (0,40)-(10,50) region. Furthermore, returned geometries will be clipped
to fit into that region.

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="source"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;source.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;SrcRegion clip="true"&gt;POLYGON((0 40,10 40,10 50,0 50,0 40))&lt;/SrcRegion&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Example: Reprojected layer (GDAL &gt;= 1.10.0)</h2>

The following example will return the source.shp layer reprojected to EPSG:4326.

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTWarpedLayer&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="source"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;source.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;TargetSRS&gt;EPSG:4326&lt;/TargetSRS&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTWarpedLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Example: Union layer (GDAL &gt;= 1.10.0)</h2>

The following example will return a layer that is the concatenation of source1.shp
and source2.shp.

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTUnionLayer name="unionLayer"&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="source1"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;source1.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="source2"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;source2.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTUnionLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Example: SQLite/Spatialite SQL dialect (GDAL &gt;=1.10.0)</h2>

The following example will return four different layers which are generated in a fly
from the same polygon shapefile. The first one is the shapefile layer as it stands.
The second layer gives simplified polygons by applying SpatiaLite function "Simplify"
with parameter tolerance=10. In the third layer the original geometries are replaced by
their convex hulls. In the fourth layer SpatiaLite function PointOnSurface is used for
replacing the original geometries by points which are inside the corresponding source
polygons. Note that for using the last three layers of this VRT file GDAL must be
compiled with SQLite and SpatiaLite.

<pre>
&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="polygons"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;polygons.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="polygons_as_simplified"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;polygons.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;SrcSQL dialect="sqlite"&gt;SELECT Simplify(geometry,10) from polygons&lt;/SrcSQL&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="polygons_as_hulls"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;polygons.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;SrcSQL dialect="sqlite"&gt;SELECT ConvexHull(geometry) from polygons&lt;/SrcSQL&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="polygons_as_points"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;polygons.shp&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;SrcSQL dialect="sqlite"&gt;SELECT PointOnSurface(geometry) from polygons&lt;/SrcSQL&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Example: Multiple geometry fields (GDAL &gt;= 1.11)</h2>

The following example will expose all the attribute and geometry fields of the
source layer:

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="test"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;PG:dbname=testdb&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

To expose only part (or all!) of the fields:

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="other_test"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;PG:dbname=testdb&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;SrcLayer&gt;test&lt;/SrcLayer&gt;
 &lt;GeometryField name="pg_geom_field_1" /&gt;
 &lt;GeometryField name="vrt_geom_field_2" field="pg_geom_field_2"&gt;
 &lt;GeometryType&gt;wkbPolygon&lt;/GeometryType&gt;
 &lt;SRS&gt;EPSG:4326&lt;/SRS&gt;
 &lt;ExtentXMin&gt;-180&lt;/ExtentXMin&gt;
 &lt;ExtentYMin&gt;-90&lt;/ExtentYMin&gt;
 &lt;ExtentXMax&gt;180&lt;/ExtentXMax&gt;
 &lt;ExtentYMax&gt;90&lt;/ExtentYMax&gt;
 &lt;/GeometryField&gt;
 &lt;Field name="vrt_field_1" src="src_field_1" /&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;w
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

To reproject the 'pg_geom_field_2' geometry field to EPSG:4326:

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTWarpedLayer&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="other_test"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;PG:dbname=testdb&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;WarpedGeomFieldName&gt;pg_geom_field_2&lt;/WarpedGeomFieldName&gt;
 &lt;TargetSRS&gt;EPSG:32631&lt;/TargetSRS&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTWarpedLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

To make the union of several multi-geometry layers and keep only a few of them:

<pre>&lt;OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTUnionLayer name="unionLayer"&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="source1"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;PG:dbname=testdb&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;OGRVRTLayer name="source2"&gt;
 &lt;SrcDataSource&gt;PG:dbname=testdb&lt;/SrcDataSource&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTLayer&gt;
 &lt;GeometryField name="pg_geom_field_2"&gt;
 &lt;GeometryType&gt;wkbPolygon&lt;/GeometryType&gt;
 &lt;SRS&gt;EPSG:4326&lt;/SRS&gt;
 &lt;ExtentXMin&gt;-180&lt;/ExtentXMin&gt;
 &lt;ExtentYMin&gt;-90&lt;/ExtentYMin&gt;
 &lt;ExtentXMax&gt;180&lt;/ExtentXMax&gt;
 &lt;ExtentYMax&gt;90&lt;/ExtentYMax&gt;
 &lt;/GeometryField&gt;
 &lt;GeometryField name="pg_geom_field_3" /&gt;
 &lt;Field name="src_field_1" /&gt;
 &lt;/OGRVRTUnionLayer&gt;
&lt;/OGRVRTDataSource&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Other Notes</h2>

<ul>

<li> When the GeometryField is "WKT" spatial filtering is applied
after extracting all rows from the source datasource. Essentially that means
there is no fast spatial filtering on WKT derived geometries.

<li> When the GeometryField is "PointFromColumns", and a SrcLayer (as opposed
to SrcSQL) is used, and a spatial filter is in effect on the virtual layer
then the spatial filter will be internally translated into an attribute filter
on the X and Y columns in the SrcLayer. In cases where fast spatial filtering
is important it can be helpful to index the X and Y columns in the source
datastore, if that is possible. For instance if the source is an RDBMS.
You can turn off that feature by setting the useSpatialSubquery attribute
of the GeometryField element to FALSE.

</ul>

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