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

[Roger Bivand]

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009, Dan Putler wrote:

> 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?

Perhaps unfortunately, shapefiles will be around for a long time. The only 
alternatives in volume are probably KML, but are restricted in many ways. 
We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

Roger

>
> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

-- 
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