[GRASSLIST:3479] Re: impoirt of data tables associated with vector data

[rgrmill at rt66.com]

Alexis,

> So I have been having fun getting to know Grass5 in relation to my 
ArcView
> maps (city planning office data). What I'd like to know is how do I
> impoirt/access data associated with a polygon layer? For example I 
have a
> shapefile (.dbf, .shp, .ain, .aih, .shx) for city parks and I want to
> access data columns on park name and MBP code.

ESRI shape files can be imported to GRASS using the v.in.shape command.  

The capability of that command depends on the GRASS5 revision that you 
are using. In fact it has been very recently upgraded.

If the MBP code is a numeric value then probably the organization that 
would be most suitable for you is to use the MBP code as the category 
value and the park name as the category text.  I don't know how you 
would go about making those associations in an automated fashion.

> What is the equivalent of opening up theme tables in arcview? I have 
tried
> to play with the database commands, but the documentation hasn't 
helped at
> all. I keep getting told that I have no DBMSCAP file, but, seemingly, 
this
> file is not created when I use db.connect.

I haven't worked with arcview so I don't know exactly what a theme table 
is.  More generally, database support in GRASS is not well organized.  
For a simple association between a code and a text string you probably 
don't need database support.  That association is provided by the 
category and category label.  The problem is with getting those 
categories and labels loaded into the category table.  Perhaps someone 
else can help with that.


Good luck
Roger Miller