With GIS, or Geographical Information Systems, digital maps and images are made. It usually concerns vector images with an underlying data table as the basis. This table can be opened as tabular data within the GIS application.

Preferred formats 

• GML (.gml)
• MIF/MID (.mif / .mid)
• GeoJSON (.json)

Non-preferred

• Esri Shapefile (.shp and related files)
• MapInfo (.tab and related files)
• KML (.kml; .kmz)
• Esri Geodatabase (.gdb)
• Project files / Workspaces (.mxd; .wor; .qgs)