The FDO API is a set of APIs used for creating, managing, and examining information, enabling Autodesk GIS products to seamlessly share spatial and non-spatial information, with minimal effort.
FDO is intended to provide consistent access to feature data, whether it comes from a CAD-based data source, or from a relational data store that supports rich classification. To achieve this, FDO supports a model that can readily support the capabilities of each data source, allowing consumer applications functionality to be tailored to match that of the data source. For example, some data sources may support spatial queries, while others do not. Also, a flexible metadata model is required in FDO, allowing clients to adapt to the underlying feature schema exposed by each data source.