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

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 FunctionDeveloped 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.AvailabilityFor more information about the OSGeo SQL Server Spatial FDO Provider, visit http://fdo.osgeo.org/. FDO data access technology is also built into AutoCAD Map 3D, AutoCAD Civil 3D, Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise and Autodesk Topobase.