GRASS GIS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a free, open source geographical information system (GIS) capable of handling raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphic data.
GRASS is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and it can be used on multiple platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux. Users can interface with the software features through a graphical user interface (GUI) or by "plugging into" GRASS via other software such as Quantum GIS. They can also interface with the modules directly through a bespoke shell that the application launches or by calling individual modules directly from a standard shell.
The GRASS 6 release introduced a new topological 2D/3D vector engine and support for vector network analysis. Attributes are managed in .dbf files or SQL-based DBMS such as MySQL, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, and SQLite. The system is capable of visualizing 3D vector graphics data and voxel volumes. GRASS supports an extensive range of raster and vector formats through the binding to GDAL/OGR libraries, including OGC-conformal (Open Geospatial Consortium) Simple Features for interoperability with other GIS. It also supports Linear Reference System.
The GRASS Development Team is a multi-national group consisting of developers at numerous locations. GRASS is one of the eight initial Software Projects of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.
Read more about GRASS GIS: Architecture, History
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