GDAL is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats that is released under an X/MIT style Open Source License by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single raster abstract data model and single vector abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing.
For these exercises GDAL needs to be installed, preferably using the OSGEO4W distribution package for windows os. The GDAL website: http://www.gdal.org The OSGEO4W website: http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/