GeoPackage (OGC 12-128) → Darwin Core Archive · KML
What you are seeing — you were told to switch from shapefiles to GeoPackage, and now nothing you have opens a .gpkg either.
A GeoPackage is a SQLite database with a few extra tables that declare what is in it: which tables are map layers, which column of each holds the geometry, and what coordinate system it is in. All of that lives INSIDE the one file, which is the point.
What it buys you over a shapefile is real. Column names are not capped at 10 characters — a shapefile's .dbf truncates them and the original spelling is gone. The coordinate system travels in the file instead of in a .prj sidecar somebody can lose. Text is Unicode by the format's own definition, so there is no character set to guess at.
One caveat worth knowing: a GeoPackage exported from a shapefile inherits the shapefile's truncation. The format has no cap, but the names were already cut before the GeoPackage was written, and no reader can undo that. We say when we see names sitting at exactly ten characters, because it usually means exactly this.
We read GeoPackage natively — no conversion step, no GIS. Drop one and you get the same report a shapefile gets: the columns, what their values support, and what we refused to interpret.
.gpkg. If it holds several layers we list them and ask which one you meant, rather than picking the first.We read GeoPackage directly — layers, full-length columns, and the coordinate system out of the file's own SRS table. Free until 1 September 2026, 00:00 UTC · no account · your rows are discarded after the check.
Check the file you have →Measured on a file GBIF had already accepted and served — their validator asks will this load, and it had. Every figure is read from ops/data.json, never typed here. We issue no rating and no seal — each finding names the rule it applied.