[R-sig-Geo] Create ESRI personal geodatabase (.mdb) in R?

[Roger Bivand]

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009, Mark Na wrote:

> Hi Dan & Roger,
> Thanks for your comments. What do you know about ESRI's new "file
> geodatabase" file structure -- is it any more open (or integrable with R)
> than the personal geodatabase?

The last slide on:

http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/pug07/papers/workshops/file-gdb.pdf

says that it is using an open API with GDAL, ODBC, but no details. I guess 
someone with access to ArcGIS would need to create various things in the 
file folder and see what they are. I'm afraid that they are not intended 
for inter-operation.

Roger

>
> Mark
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 23 Oct 2009, Mark Na wrote:
>>
>>  Hello,
>>> I would like to write spatial data to an ESRI personal geodatabase (.mdb)
>>> and I wonder if anyone has experience with this.
>>>
>>> My workflow, at present, is as follows:
>>>
>>> 1. Read spatial data into R (from a .csv file).
>>>
>>> 2. Manipulate the data in various ways.
>>>
>>> 3. Export the data from R as a .csv file, import that into ArcGIS, add XY,
>>> save the data as a table in an existing personal geodatabase (.mdb).
>>>
>>> I would like to automate step 3 by creating the .mdb in R and saving
>>> various
>>> dataframes as tables within the .mdb, so nothing has to be done in ArcGIS.
>>>
>>> I would appreciate any help you might be able to provide with this.
>>>
>>
>> This format is not available to others than ArcGIS license holders, who
>> also run on Windows and have an Access license (it is an undocumented,
>> custom Access database file). If you want to rebuild rgdal from source
>> yourself with the Pgeo driver, or ensure that an Access DLL is visible to
>> the driver, feel free to do so - hints are included in the README.windows
>> file installed with rgdal. Since the Pgeo driver is read only, this only
>> gets you so far. The format is closed (and very muddled, as browsing such a
>> file will show), and best avoided in its entirety. Simply saving a few
>> hundred point coordinates may run you up to hundreds of Kb.
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>
>>
>>> Many thanks, Mark
>>>
>>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> R-sig-Geo mailing list
>>> R-sig-Geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Roger Bivand
>> Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
>> Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
>> Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
>> e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
>>
>>
>
>
>

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no