I have to point out that shapefiles are not an acceptable substitute for users with numeric NULLs, fieldnames longer than 10 characters, UTF-16 strings, strings exceeding 254 charcters, BLOB data, datetime fields with higher than day resolution, topologies, feature datasets, domains,.... Establishing correct spatial reference metadata can sometimes be a challenge, but getting the values right is much easier than trying to get by with a data format, created in the early 1990s, which lacks so many modern features.
- V