:Author: Pirmin Kalberer
:Reviewer: Cameron Shorter, LISAsoft
:Version: osgeo-live7.9
:License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

.. image:: ../../images/project_logos/logo-spatialite.png
  :alt: project logo
  :align: right
  :target: http://www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/


SpatiaLite
================================================================================

Spatial Database
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SpatiaLite is an SQLite_ database engine with spatial functions added. 

SQLite is a Database Management System (DBMS) which is simple, robust, easy to use and very lightweight. Each SQLite database is simply a file. You can freely copy it, compress it, and port it between Windows, Linux, MacOs etc.

.. _SQLite: http://www.sqlite.org/

.. image:: ../../images/screenshots/1024x768/spatialite.jpg
  :scale: 50 %
  :alt: screenshot
  :align: right

Core Features
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The SpatiaLite extension enables SQLite to support spatial data conformant to OGC specifications.

Highlights:

* User friendly GUI 
* Standard WKT and WKB formats
* SQL spatial functions such as AsText(), GeomFromText(), Area(), PointN() ...
* OpenGis spatial analysis functions provided via GEOS, such as Overlaps(), Touches(), Union(), Buffer() ...
* Full Spatial metadata in line with OpenGis specifications
* Numerous Geometry notations - EWKT, GML, KML, and GeoJSON
* Importing and exporting to shapefiles
* Coordinate reprojection via PROJ.4 and EPSG geodetic parameters dataset
* Locale charsets via GNU libiconv
* Spatial Index based on the SQLite's RTree extension
* Access shapefiles as VIRTUAL TABLEs, enabling standard SQL queries on external shapefiles, without importing or converting them
* Access external CSV/TxtTab files or xls spreadsheets as VIRTUAL TABLEs 
* Access XML documents, stored BLOB compressed binary objects, including syntactic "well formed" and XSF schema validation constrained checks. Specific support for ISO-Metadata, SLD/SE styles and SVG graphics.XML documents can be queried using standard XPath syntax.
* Query external WFS servers.
* Parse external DXF files (all versions) and store layers and geometries found.
* Generate and Export DXF files

Details
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**Website:** http://www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/

**Licence:** MPL v1.1 and GPL v3

**Software Version:** spatialite 4.1.1 / spatialite-gui 1.7.1

**Supported Platforms:** Linux, Mac, Windows

**API Interfaces:** C


Quickstart
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* :doc:`Quickstart documentation <../quickstart/spatialite_quickstart>`