2025-03-18 TIL: GeoParquet and .NET MAUI HybridWebView Control

2025-03-18 TIL: GeoParquet and .NET MAUI HybridWebView Control

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GeoParquet

Geospatial data in Parquet. Apache Parquet is a powerful column-oriented data format, designed as a modern alternative to CSV files. While Parquet excels at storing large and complex datasets, it lacks native geospatial support—which led to the creation of GeoParquet.

GeoParquet is an incubating Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard that introduces interoperable geospatial types (Point, Line, Polygon) to Parquet.

  • Establish a robust geospatial format for columnar workflows
  • Introduce columnar data formats to the geospatial world
  • Enable interoperability among cloud data warehouses

HybridWebView

HybridWebView is a new control introduced in .NET MAUI 9 that enables hosting HTML/JS/CSS content in a WebView while allowing two-way communication between JavaScript (inside the WebView) and C#/.NET (the host application).

For example, you can embed an existing React JS application within a cross-platform .NET MAUI native app, using C# and .NET for the backend.

  • The entire app, including web content, is packaged and runs locally on the device.
  • The web content is hosted within a native WebView and functions within the app’s context.
  • The app can access external web services but does not require them.
Puran Zhang @puran