Prepress

Autodesk Donates New Data Access Technology for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to Open Source Community

Thursday 28. February 2008 - Latest Milestone Coincides with OSGeo Endorsement of FDO Technology

Advancing its vision for a powerful, flexible, affordable and open geospatial software platform, Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) today announced the availability of an open source Feature Data Object (FDO) Provider for Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The latest FDO Provider, developed by Autodesk and donated to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), will allow customers take advantage of the native support for spatial data in Microsoft SQL Server 2008, by providing them the ability to directly access and manipulate the data within the new database. Today’s announcement coincides with the graduation of FDO to a fully-endorsed project status in the open source community.

“With the addition of spatial data type and indexing capabilities to Microsoft SQL Server 2008, we are giving our customers additional functionality and flexibility with their location and design information,” said Kim Saunders, senior director of marketing for SQL Server at Microsoft Corp. “This new FDO Provider for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 makes it possible to access and manipulate data directly within the new database, extending the value of the information across the organization.”

“Organizations today need to access and analyze spatial data from a variety of sources and file formats to conduct business efficiently,” said Lisa Campbell, vice president, Autodesk Geospatial. “Autodesk developed this FDO Provider for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to help customers make the most of spatial and design information by eliminating error, data duplication and manual or time-consuming data conversion.”

Developers Can Focus on Applications’ Business Function

Developed initially by Autodesk and released to the open source community in 2006, FDO data access technology recently transitioned to full project status within OSGeo. OSGeo FDO data providers allow users to extend the data access capabilities of a geospatial application without having to wait for the next full release of that application. As a result, the FDO data provider frees application developers and independent software vendors (ISV) to focus on business functionality without having to build data store access functions. The latest FDO data provider for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 joins the 17 existing FDO data providers, including seven developed since the technology was donated to the open source community.