The Open Geospatial Consortium published GeoPackage 1.0 as an official standard in February 2014, building it on the SQLite database engine specifically to address the fragmentation problems of older vector formats. Successive revisions followed, with version 1.3 approved in November 2020, each remaining backward compatible with the core single-file SQLite design.<\/p>\n
A GeoPackage is a standard SQLite database file that stores vector features with their geometry and attributes, raster tile matrix sets for imagery or elevation data, plain non-spatial tables, and spatial reference metadata, all inside one set of defined SQL tables. Because it’s built on SQLite, any generic SQLite client can open a GeoPackage even without GIS software, and multiple layers of different types can live in the same file rather than being scattered across separate documents.<\/p>\n
This is, functionally, the direct modern answer to Shapefile’s core weakness. Where a shapefile depends on three or more separate files staying together by convention, a GeoPackage folds geometry, index, attributes, and coordinate reference metadata into one self-contained database, eliminating the risk of a broken or incomplete dataset that comes from moving files around independently.<\/p>\n For a DAM handling GIS assets, GeoPackage is close to an ideal storage target: it’s a single binary file to version and back up, it can be queried directly with SQL to extract metadata for search indexing without a GIS library, and it comfortably holds multiple related layers that would otherwise require a DAM to track a whole folder of shapefiles as one logical asset. Converting inbound Shapefile submissions to GeoPackage on ingest is a practical way for a DAM to standardize its GIS holdings around one dependable, single-file format.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GeoPackage is an OGC standard for storing vector features, raster tile sets, and attribute data together in a single, platform-independent SQLite database file.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"","faq":[{"question":"What database technology is GeoPackage built on?","answer":"SQLite 3. A GeoPackage file is a standard SQLite database with a defined schema for geospatial vector, raster, and attribute tables."},{"question":"How does GeoPackage solve the problem Shapefile has?","answer":"It stores geometry, attributes, indexes, and coordinate reference metadata together in one SQLite file, instead of splitting them across separate .shp, .shx, and .dbf files that can become separated or lost."},{"question":"Can one GeoPackage file hold multiple layers?","answer":"Yes, a single .gpkg file can contain multiple vector layers, raster tile sets, and non-spatial tables together, which a DAM can treat as one asset instead of a folder of related files."},{"question":"When did the OGC publish the GeoPackage standard?","answer":"GeoPackage 1.0 was published as an OGC standard in February 2014, with the current version 1.3 approved in November 2020."},{"question":"Can a GeoPackage be opened without GIS software?","answer":"Yes, since it's a standard SQLite database, any generic SQLite client or the sqlite3 command line tool can open and query a GeoPackage file directly."},{"question":"Is GeoPackage a good target for converting old Shapefile collections?","answer":"Yes, converting legacy shapefiles to GeoPackage on DAM ingest consolidates the multi-file bundle into one dependable, standards-based file while preserving geometry and attributes."},{"question":"Does GeoPackage support raster imagery as well as vector data?","answer":"Yes, it defines a tile matrix set structure for storing raster tiles and imagery alongside vector features in the same file."},{"question":"Why is GeoPackage considered easier to manage in a DAM than Shapefile?","answer":"It's a single self-describing file rather than a bundle of dependent files, so a DAM can version, back up, and query it like any other single binary asset without risking a broken dataset."}],"checked_date":"2026-08-07","sources":[{"statement":"GeoPackage 1.0 published as an OGC standard in February 2014; built on SQLite as a single-file database container","source_name":"OGC GeoPackage Encoding Standard","url":"https:\/\/docs.ogc.org\/is\/12-128r17\/12-128r17.html","checked":"2026-08-07"},{"statement":"GeoPackage stores vector features, raster tile matrix sets, and non-spatial attribute data in one SQLite file, addressing shapefile's multi-file fragility","source_name":"Library of Congress \u2014 Sustainability of Digital Formats: GeoPackage","url":"https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/preservation\/digital\/formats\/fdd\/fdd000520.shtml","checked":"2026-08-07"}],"kicker":"","fact_checker":0,"reading_time":0,"revisions":[],"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","noindex":false,"ext":"gpkg","full_name":"OGC GeoPackage","vendor_name":"Open Geospatial Consortium","introduced":"GeoPackage 1.0 published as an OGC standard in February 2014; current version 1.3 approved November 2020","container_notes":"A GeoPackage is one SQLite 3 database file holding vector geometry with attributes, tile matrix sets for raster\/imagery data, non-spatial tables, and spatial metadata, all inside standard SQLite tables that any SQLite-aware tool can query. It was explicitly designed to replace the multi-file fragility of Shapefile with a single self-describing container, extending to mobile and offline use cases where keeping several loose files synchronized is impractical.","open_with":[{"platform":"Desktop GIS","how":"QGIS treats GeoPackage as a first-class native format for both vector and raster layers"},{"platform":"Desktop GIS","how":"Esri ArcGIS Pro reads and writes GeoPackage files"},{"platform":"Database tools","how":"Any SQLite client (DB Browser for SQLite, sqlite3 CLI) can open a .gpkg file since it is a standard SQLite database"},{"platform":"Command line","how":"GDAL\/OGR's ogr2ogr converts Shapefile, GeoJSON, and KML into GeoPackage and back"}],"archive_advice":"GeoPackage is well suited as a DAM's preferred long-term archival container for vector and raster GIS data, since the single-file SQLite structure avoids the companion-file loss risk of Shapefile while remaining an open, documented OGC standard rather than a proprietary database format. When converting legacy Shapefile collections for archiving, GeoPackage is a reasonable modernization target that preserves geometry, attributes, and multiple layers in one file.","related":[],"tool_link":""},"silo":[23],"class_list":["post-2999","format","type-format","status-publish","hentry","silo-formats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/picajet.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format\/2999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/picajet.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/picajet.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/format"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/picajet.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format\/2999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3284,"href":"https:\/\/picajet.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format\/2999\/revisions\/3284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/picajet.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"silo","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/picajet.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/silo?post=2999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/th> Shapefile<\/th> GeoPackage<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> File structure<\/td> 3+ separate companion files<\/td> Single SQLite database file<\/td><\/tr> Raster support<\/td> No (vector only)<\/td> Yes (tile matrix sets)<\/td><\/tr> Multiple layers per file<\/td> No, one geometry type per file<\/td> Yes, multiple vector\/raster layers<\/td><\/tr> Queryable without GIS software<\/td> No<\/td> Yes, with any SQLite client<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n