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

[Dan Putler]

Hi Roger,

A bit off-topic, but what do you think will be the real replacement for
the shapefile as the de facto standard vector file format? SpatialLite?

Dan

On Fri, 2009-10-23 at 21:47 +0200, Roger Bivand wrote:
> 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
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> 
-- 
Dan Putler
Sauder School of Business
University of British Columbia