Apache SIS - The Apache SIS™ library
Apache SIS™
The Apache SIS™ library
Apache Spatial Information System (SIS) is a free software, Java language library for developing geospatial applications.
SIS provides data structures for geographic features and associated metadata along with methods to manipulate those data structures.
The library is an implementation of
GeoAPI 3.0.2
interfaces and can be used for desktop or server applications.
The library is provided under
Apache 2 license
The SIS metadata module enables the creation of metadata objects
which comply with the model of
OGC
ISO
international standards.
The SIS referencing module enables the construction of data structures for
coordinate reference system definitions
along with the
associated operations
which enable the transformation of coordinates between different systems of reference.
The SIS storage modules provide a common approach to the reading and writing of metadata, features and coverages
applicable to simple imagery as to many dimensional data structures.
SIS provides processing functions such as multi-threaded rasters reprojection and isolines computation from raster data.
The API and the data encodings follow
international standards
when available.
More information on international standards and features supported by Apache
SIS
Raster formats:
Read
NetCDF-3 Classic and 64-bit Offset Format
Read
GeoTIFF
or Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG), including BigTIFF extension.
Read Landsat (groups of GeoTIFF files).
Read ESRI BIL/BIP/BSQ and read/write ERSI ASCII Grid.
Read/write World Files with any image format supported by Image I/O.
If the
GDAL library
is installed, read other two-dimensional raster formats supported by GDAL.
Feature formats:
Read
Moving Feature Comma Separated Values (CSV) encoding
Read
Moving Feature netCDF encoding
Read/Write
GPX
(a
XML
schema for
GPS
data).
Read
features from
SQL
spatial databases
by analysing the database schema.
Geographic metadata (ISO 19115):
Read ISO 19115 metadata from all above-listed raster and feature formats.
Read and write XML documents compliant with ISO 19115-3 (current standard) or ISO 19139 (older standard).
Automatic conversions between the old metadata model published in 2003 and the revision published in 2014.
Units of measurement:
Implementation of
JSR-385
with parsing, formating and unit conversion functionalities.
The same implementation is available as a
small standalone separated project
Referencing by coordinates (ISO 19111):
Read and write Well Known Text (WKT) version 1 and 2 (ISO 19162).
Read and write
Geographic Markup Language
(GML) version 3.2 (ISO 19136).
Use
EPSG geodetic dataset
for geodetic definitions and for coordinate operations.
More than 8000
supported coordinate reference systems
Mercator, Transverse Mercator, Lambert Conic Conformal, stereographic
and more
supported operation methods
Referencing by identifiers (ISO 19112):
Geohashes (a simple encoding of geographic coordinates into short strings of letters and digits).
Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), also used for some civilian uses.
Processing:
Multi-threaded raster reprojection.
Multi-threaded isolines computation from raster data.
Filtering of features
(ISO 19143 conceptual model).
Using Apache SIS
The latest SIS release is 1.6, released in January 2026,
and can be
downloaded
as a
zip
files or as Maven dependencies.
The EPSG geodetic dataset is optional for licensing reasons, but recommended.
EPSG database installation is
described in a separated page
This Apache SIS version requires Java 11 or later and uses the Java Platform Module System (JPMS).
Applications should declare SIS JAR files on their module-path rather than their class-path,
but a compatibility mechanism makes possible to nevertheless use SIS on the class-path.
Note that this class-path compatibility may be removed in future versions.
Apache
SIS
is a Java library for use by other applications.
Leveraging the full SIS capabilities or getting the best performance require that users write their own applications on top of SIS.
The
developer guide
online Javadoc
and
recommended code patterns
page
provide instructions about developing with SIS.
command-line tool
and a
JavaFX application
are also provided for allowing users to experiment some SIS functionalities before writing code.
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