AutoCAD Map 3D: What is FDO?

FDO Data Access Technology is Autodesk’s common geospatial data access platform. FDO is incorporated into Autodesk Geospatial products, and is also available as a standalone, open source technology for developers. FDO supports the creation of data-store neutral applications and makes it easier to exchange information. The underlying technology is based on open standards, so it eliminates many of the difficulties commonly encountered when working with proprietary systems. Using FDO Providers, you can connect directly to ESRI ArcSDE and SHP, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL feature sources, as well as access public data sources via WMS and WFS. You can also access data providers developed by the open-source community using FDO. The result is that you can build a map using layers of data from many different sources, while accessing all of those data sources in exactly the same way.

All FDO providers access data stored in data tables using standard database concepts. An FDO feature source is any source of feature data that can be accessed using an FDO provider. It can be a file, such as SDF or SHP, a relational database, such as Microsoft SQL Server, or it can be middleware, such as ArcSDE. These feature sources can contain a single feature type, such as parcels, or they may contain a complex data model with multiple features and attribute tables.

When you organize and classify your data, and use FDO Data Access Technology, you can work with much larger data sets than you can with traditional DWG files. Classifying data and storing it in an FDO feature source also gives you more flexibility when styling your data, allowing you to move beyond basic CAD maps to advanced cartography and presentations. In a DWG file, style is a property of the AutoCAD object. However, data stored in an FDO feature source does not have any styling. Styling is separate from the data. This means you can use the powerful style engine, shared by AutoCAD Map 3D and MapGuide, to create different maps with different representations of the same data. For example, you can reorganize layers, change colors, use transparency, and theme features based on their attribute data.