# VFK - Czech Cadastral Exchange Data Format

This driver reads VFK files, i.e. data in the Czech cadastral exchange data format. The VFK file is recognized as an datasource with zero or more layers.

Note: starting with GDAL 1.10, the driver is compiled only if GDAL is built with SQLite support.

Points are represented as wkbPoints, lines and boundaries as wkbLineStrings and areas as wkbPolygons. wkbMulti* features are not used. Feature types cannot be mixed in one layer.

## Open options

Starting with GDAL 2.3, the following open options can be specified (typically with the "-oo name=value" parameters of ogrinfo or ogr2ogr):

- SUPPRESS_GEOMETRY=YES/NO (defaults to NO). Setting it to YES will skip resolving geometry. All layers will be recognized with no geometry type. Mostly useful when user is interested at attributes only. Note that suppressing geometry can cause significant performance gain when reading input VFK data by the driver.

### Configuration options

(set with "--config key value" on GDAL command line utilities)

Starting with GDAL 1.9, the driver uses SQLite as a backend database when reading VFK data. By default, SQLite database is created in a directory of input VFK file (with file extension '.db'). Since GDAL 1.10, the user can define DB name with OGR_VFK_DB_NAME configuration option. If OGR_VFK_DB_OVERWRITE=YES configuration option is given, the driver overwrites existing SQLite database and stores data read from input VFK file into newly created DB. Since GDAL 1.11, if OGR_VFK_DB_DELETE=YES configuration option is given, the driver deletes backend SQLite database when closing the datasource.

Starting with GDAL 1.10, resolved geometries are stored also in backend SQLite database. It means that geometries are resolved only once when building SQLite database from VFK data. Geometries are stored in WKB format. Note that GDAL doesn't need to be built with SpatiaLite support. Geometries are not stored in DB when OGR_VFK_DB_SPATIAL=NO configuration option is given. In this case geometries are resolved when reading data from DB on the fly.

### Internal working and performance tweaking

If backend SQLite database already exists then the driver reads features directly from the database and not from input VFK file given as an input datasource. This causes significant performance gain when reading features by the driver.

Since GDAL 1.11, the driver reads by default all data blocks from VFK file when building backend SQLite database. When configuration option OGR_VFK_DB_READ_ALL_BLOCKS=NO is given, the driver reads only data blocks which are requested by the user. This can be useful when the user want to process only part of VFK data.

## Datasource name

Datasource name is a full path to the VFK file.

The driver supports reading files managed by VSI Virtual File System API, which include "regular" files, as well as files in the /vsizip/, /vsigzip/, and /vsicurl/ read-only domains.

Since GDAL 2.2 also a full path to the backend SQLite database can be used as an datasource. By default, such datasource is read by SQLite driver. If configuration option OGR_VFK_DB_READ=YES is given, such datasource is open by VFK driver instead.

## Layer names

VFK data blocks are used as layer names.

## Filters

### Attribute filter

An internal SQL engine is used to evaluate the expression. Evaluation is done once when the attribute filter is set.

### Spatial filter

Bounding boxes of features stored in topology structure are used to evaluate if a features matches current spatial filter. Evaluation is done once when the spatial filter is set.

## References

- OGR VFK Driver Implementation Issues
- Open Source Tools for VFK format (in Czech)
- Czech cadastral exchange data format documentation (in Czech)