[Qgis-user] S-57 Support

[Chris H]

On Friday 28 March 2008 03:15:06 pm you wrote:

> I believe QGIS uses GDAL/OGR to access S-57 datasets. These data include a
> range of attributes not supported by common GIS formats, such as
> shapefiles, and the OGR support is (unfortunately) read only. Any issues
> with QGIS and S-57 access are probably better addressed in GDAL/OGR forums.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Its really appreciated. 

> One workaround would perhaps be to implement a PostGIS database essentially
> replicating your S-57 data, generated automatically or manually from the
> S-57 files, and use this to provide the data to be plotted by QGIS.

I will have to investigate this approach to see if it works. 
 
> I assume the issues with an S-57 writer is that many of the fields in this
> format are not easily derived from many other GIS formats, so a
> straightforward conversion is often not possible, thus a generic writer has
> not been implemented, making it difficult to move the PostGIS data back to
> S-57.

OK..im starting to understand the issues now. 

> Information about the support for S-57 provided by GDAL/OGR is at:
> http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_s57.html
> http://home.gdal.org/projects/s57/index.html

Thanks

> I'm not a great fan of managing data in shapefiles, but they are a useful
> format for transferring data between applications. An application like the
> new CARIS S-57 composer, which can import shapefiles to generate S-57
> files, might be useful, but is commercial software. Knowing Caris & GIS
> generally, it probably ain't cheap.

and closed source apps are not really an option for this project.

> An approach building & managing your data in PostGIS, then exporting to
> shapefile to build S-57 charts with the Caris software might be viable, and
> still much cheaper that a totally commercial solution. This would allow
> QGIS & most other FOSS GIS tools to interact with the data, for viweing,
> editing & managing it.
>
> http://www.caris.com/news/story.cfm?id=41
>
>
> HTH,

Yup helps a lot. Its very much appreciated.

Best regards

-- 
/ch