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<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Hi Hamish,</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"><BR>> How "proprietary" are we talking here? Is the specification known?<BR>> ie is it unknown or just unusual? Is that "can't just be loaded" from a<BR>> technical (wrong layout) or fundamental (square peg into round hole)<BR>> meaning? ASCII is good.</DIV>
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<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Yes the files are ASCII and UNIX compressed. However they are not straight unloads from the tables, there is a LINZ custom (i.e unusual) header first before the database dump. However if the file header is removed, the format can be directly loaded by the PostgreSQL COPY command. An explanation of the files is here:</DIV>
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<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"><A href="http://www.linz.govt.nz/docs/surveysystem/landonline-bulkdata/bulk-data-extract-data_dictionary-v15-0.pdf">http://www.linz.govt.nz/docs/surveysystem/landonline-bulkdata/bulk-data-extract-data_dictionary-v15-0.pdf</A><BR><BR>> It is good news that we don't have to start from shapefiles, they may be<BR>> universal but parts of the format (DBF) are lossy and unnice.<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Yes definitely</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"><BR>> What format are the DB dump tables? Something from Oracle?</DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">See above, the dumps come from INFORMIX<BR><BR>> It seems to be PostgreSQL/PostGIS would be the strongest candidate for a<BR>> target. (I'd guess Brent could answer that much better than me though...)<BR><BR>Yes we here at LINZ have an PostgreSQL/PostGIS instance which include all of the BDE data which is updated regularly. The only small issue I can see is that all geometry data has been shifted (so transformations can be applied in our GIS) over the 180 degree longitude line. This can easily be reversed during processing. See section 3.3 of <A href="http://www.linz.govt.nz/docs/surveysystem/landonline-bulkdata/introduction-to-bulk-data-v16-0.pdf">http://www.linz.govt.nz/docs/surveysystem/landonline-bulkdata/introduction-to-bulk-data-v16-0.pdf</A></DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000"><BR>> Personally, I like to deal with intact raw data and scripts which can<BR>> reprocess that data whenever there is an upstream update or an<BR>> improvement to the conversion algorithm is developed.<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Sounds like a good idea.<BR><BR>Cheers</DIV>
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<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Jeremy Palmer<BR>Geospatial Analyst<BR>LINZ - Geodetic Team<BR>PO Box 5501<BR>Wellington 6145</DIV>
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<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">DDI: +64 4 498 3537<BR>Fax: +64 4 460 0112</DIV>
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