What is GDAL

opensource ETL Tool
Currently supports around 100 vector formats and 150 raster
GDAL = Geospatial Data Abstraction Library, Raster
OGR = OpenGIS Simple Features Reference Implementation?? Vector
GDAL 2.0: GDAL and OGR components integrated together, previously separate
more at gdal site

Using GDAL

GDAL composed of:
- command line tools
- library: with bindings to many languages
ogr2ogr: command line geospatial ETL... Similar to FME but better
other tools in GDAL toolbox

library Bindings

Offically supported bindings:

C
C++
Java
Python

Third party support for:

go
julia
R
Perl
node.js
Lua
PHP

Getting it installed...