evaluate use of GDAL OGR vector API via {gdalraster}

[brownag]

There are several workarounds in place to adapt {vapour} functionality RE: OGRSQL. It may be possible to be a bit more directly connected to the GDAL API by switching to the (pending) gdalvector bindings via {gdalraster}
https://usdaforestservice.github.io/gdalraster/articles/gdalvector-draft.html

[mdsumner]

I just came here to say this, or check that you were aware - I'm pretty confident now that I will migrate my API usage from vapour to gdalraster. There's been a few things I found on the way, like infoAsJSON() is currently running '-stats' and '-hist' so it's prohibitively slow, and I needed Byte-data returned natively - but so far I've been able to get what I need and will start contributing heavily to gdalraster and probably move away from vapour (not sure whether it will retire or perhaps depend on gdalraster over time).

I'll be using this project to help guide me with the gdalvector side! I really really really want DBI support for gdal vector, and if we can be returning wk vectors, geos pointers, or even maybe ogr pointers that would be amazing for a lazy spatial data frame that we crave! :)

I think we also need to take account of https://cran.r-project.org/package=duckdbfs, and https://cran.r-project.org/package=VicmapR in the lazy vector quest.