[R-sig-Geo] opening .gdb files

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Mark Trinder<Mark.Trinder at rpsgroup.com> wrote:
> Sorry - just illustrating my ignorance of such things. I had assumed it
> was a standard extension.
>
> These are some form of GIS file ('geographic database'?), but I don't
> know what program produced them. I think they can be opened in ARCGIS,
> but I don't have access to that.

 I suspect 'gdb' to most people here means 'GNU debugger' :)

 The easiest thing is to get back to the source and ask for it in a
format you can deal with - shapefile for vectors, geoTIFF for rasters.

 It's also possibly possible to read it with OGR:

 http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_pgeo.html

 If it really is just an MS Access database with some extra tables,
try loading into Access if you have that. You might want to rename it
'.mdb' first though. OpenOffice might even read it in.

 Some stuff on the ESRI web site talks about XML versions of
geodatabases. If what you've got is an XML file (open in a text
editor, should be full of <tag>this</tag> and <tag>that</tag>, then
you might be able to get your coordinates out with a bit of editing...

Barry