This specification describes an open, standards-based, platform-independent, portable, self-describing, compact format for transferring geospatial information. It is a set of conventions for SQLite to store interoperable Features and/or Tiles on a common base. The core document additionally specifies optional Metadata and Schema information to build richer applications. An Extension Mechanism is described to provide implementors a way to include additional functionality in their GeoPackages, with a number of optional extensions included.
HTML version of the spec is available at http://opengis.github.io/geopackage/
This GitHub repository has been extracted from the Microsoft Word version of the Candidate GeoPackage Standard version 0.8 released for public comment on August 6, 2013. With this repository the OGC invites collaboration and comments directed at the development and enhancement of this candidate standard.
Based on feedback the final 1.0 specification will likely change, so consider this a work in progress, that you are encouraged to help shape. The core working group is particularly interested in making the specification easy to implement, so changes driven by attempted implementations will be given high priority.
Editor: Paul Daisey
The main specification can be read at http://opengis.github.io/geopackage/.
The asciidoc source for the specification is in the spec/ folder.
The contributor understands that any contributions, if accepted by the OGC Membership, shall be incorporated into the formal OGC GeoPackage standards document and that all copyright and intellectual property shall be vested to the OGC.
The GeoPackage SWG is accepting public comments and suggested revisions to the specification via GitHub. This is the first time OGC has supported this mechanism for public comment and review. To suggest changes to the specification please fork the repository and submit a pull request with changes to the document. Please make one pull request per logical requested change, and be sure to include a comment in the PR with any justification or reasoning on why the change is needed.
For more general comments (that don't include actual text changes to the spec) just create a github issue with the relevant information. With one issue per general change.
For more detailed guidance, or if you are new to github, see the Process page for additional information on editing.
Luciad has open sourced their implementation as libgpkg. It is quite complete, with support for features, tiles, spatial indexes, and more.
There has also been work on a GeoTools/GeoServer version.