Earlier this Last year, in June, Don Meltz wrote an interesting blog “ArcGIS vs QGIS Clipping Contest Rematch” where he let compete ArcGIS and Quantum GIS in a clipping contest. The benchmark contest data set in question is a 878MB ZIP file (ContourClipTest.zip with the (guessed) EPSG Code 2260 – NAD83 / New York East (ftUS)). The blog page gained a lot of comments, even from ESRI since some ArcGIS versions crashed on this test data set.

Find below the various timings compiled from the blog and the comments:

Proprietary software

Software Processing time Hardware/Software
ArcGIS 9.3 crash after 1h 9min: ERROR 999999: Error executing function. Invalid Topology [4gb file limit.] Failed to execute (Clip) unknown
ArcGIS 10.0 crash likewise unknown
ArcGIS 10.1 ESRI promise to calculate it in 34 seconds in this updated version (did anyone test?) unknown
GlobalMapper (version?) 30 mins unknown
GlobalMapper v11.02 49 sec Windows XP w/ 3.5GB RAM
Manifold 8 (64bit) 31 min Windows XP64 16 gb. RAM and 2.33 GHz

Note: The two GlobalMapper results are a bit funny, perhaps always minutes?

Free and Open Source Software

Software Processing time Hardware/Software
Quantum GIS (version?; Simple features) 4-5 min unknown
GRASS GIS 7 (topological GIS) 5 min Dell PowerEdge 2950 from 2008, Intel Xeon 2.66GHz, 8GB RAM
gvSIG to be done
PostGIS to be done

Notes: Hope volunteers will test this also on gvSIG and PostGIS (and other FOSSGIS)! Please report…

The program of the GFOSSDAY 2012 + OSMit2012 @ Torino, Italy, has been published:
https://www.gfoss.it/drupal/gfossday2012/programma

We offer there a GRASS GIS workshop on Friday 16th Nov 2012 at 9:30. You are welcome!

Location:
Centro Incontri Regione Piemonte, Corso Stati Uniti 23, Torino, Italy