flatten/dissolve/merge entire shapefile - gis

Question

I've been using ogr2ogr to do most of what I need with shapefiles (including dissolving them). However, I find that for big ones, it takes a REALLY long time.
Here's an example of what I'm doing:
ogr2ogr new.shp old.shp -dialect sqlite -sql "SELECT ST_Union(geometry) FROM old"
In certain instances, one might want to dissolve common neighboring shapes (which is what I think is going on here in the above command). However, in my case I simply want to flatten the entire file and every shape in it regardless of the values (I've already isolated the shapes I need).
Is there a faster way to do this when you don't need to care about the values and just want a shape that outlines the array of shapes in the file?

Answer 1

If you have isolated the shapes, and they don't have any shared boundaries, they can be easily collected into a single MULTIPOLYGON using ST_Collect. This should be really fast and simple to do:
ogr2ogr gcol.shp old.shp -dialect sqlite -sql "SELECT ST_Collect(geometry) FROM old"
If the geometries overlap and the boundaries need to be "dissolved", then ST_Union must be used. Faster spatial unions are done with a cascaded union technique, described here for PostGIS. It is supported by OGR, but it doesn't seem to be done elegantly.
Here is a two step SQL query. First make a MULTIPOLYGON of everything with ST_Collect (this is fast), then do a self-union which should trigger a UnionCascaded() call.
ogr2ogr new.shp old.shp -dialect sqlite -sql "SELECT ST_Union(gcol, gcol) FROM (SELECT ST_Collect(geometry) AS gcol FROM old) AS f"
Or to better view the actual SQL statement:
SELECT ST_Union(gcol, gcol)
FROM (
SELECT ST_Collect(geometry) AS gcol
FROM old
) AS f

Answer 2

I've had better success (i.e. faster) by converting it to raster then back to vector. For example:
# convert the vector file old.shp to a raster file new.tif using a pixel size of XRES/YRES
gdal_rasterize -tr XRES YRES -burn 255 -ot Byte -co COMPRESS=DEFLATE old.shp new.tif
# convert the raster file new.tif to a vector file new.shp, using the same raster as a -mask speeds up the processing
gdal_polygonize.py -f 'ESRI Shapefile' -mask new.tif new.tif new.shp
# removes the DN attribute created by gdal_polygonize.py
ogrinfo new.shp -sql "ALTER TABLE new DROP COLUMN DN"