Even Rouault

SOZip ([Seek-Optimized ZIP](https://sozip.org)) is a new open specification on top of the ZIP archive format to compress one or several files organized and annotated such that a SOZip-aware reader can perform very fast random access (seek) within a compressed file. SOZip makes it possible to access large compressed files directly from a .zip file without prior decompression. It is not a new file format, but a profile of the existing ZIP format, done in a fully backward compatible way. ZIP readers that are non-SOZip aware can read a SOZip-enabled file normally and ignore the extended features that support efficient seek capability. We will present how SOZip works under the hood and discuss about SOZip implementations, in particular in [GDAL](https://gdal.org), which make it possible for its downstream users, in particular [QGIS](https://qgis.org), to read seamlessly and efficiently large compressed files in [GeoPackage](http://www.geopackage.org/), [FlatGeoBuf](https://flatgeobuf.org/), or shapefile formats.

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We will give a status report on the GDAL software, focusing on recent developments and achievements in the 3.6 and 3.7 GDAL versions released during the last year, but also on the general health of the project. The discussed topics will be as various as the scope of GDAL is, covering the new single CMake build system, the full open source write vector support for the Esri FileGeodatabase format, a Arrow-based columnar oriented read API for vector layers implement in the Arrow, (Geo)Parquet, GeoPackage and FlatGeoBuf drivers, new vector layer API for table relationsihp management, new raster drivers for the JPEG-XL, KTX2, BASISU, NSIDCbin formats, multi-threaded read capabilities in the GeoTIFF driver, multiple performance improvements in the GeoPackage driver, advanced API to read raster compressed data, a new vector driver for the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), support for the new Seek Optimized ZIP (SOZip) specification, etc.

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