[GRASSLIST:10099] Re: trying to read in ArcView/.mdb file of NYC roads

[William Kyngesburye]

Currently, my GIS Libs package for Mac OS X has the Personal GeoDB  
(pgeo) support built into GDAL.  My GDAL/OGR uses the Mac OS X- 
included iODBC instead of unixODBC, so all you need is to get and  
install an Access iODBC driver.  The one that I found that can read  
the MDB directly is from Actual Technologies:

http://www.actualtechnologies.com/product_access.php

I don't think the iODBC driver is binary-compatible with unixODBC, so  
you wouldn't be able to do that with Lorenzo's MAC OS X GRASS  
binaries.  You would have to convert them to an intermediate format,  
like shapefile, then import to GRASS.  Until I make that GRASS  
installer based on my GIS Libs that I keep saying I will do ^_^  Or  
Lorenzo switches to iODBC.

I haven't written up any setup instructions yet, but its simple  
enough (setup itself or writeup instructions).


On Jan 31, 2006, at 11:41 AM, Roger Bivand wrote:

> On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, William Kyngesburye wrote:
>
>> MDB is used by the ArcGIS Personal Geodatabase.  GDAL/OGR 1.3.1 has
>> support for reading these (except that it doesn't read annotation).
>> It does this by using ODBC.  So you need an ODBC driver for the MDB
>> format (MS Access) as well as GDAL.  Those can be a bit difficult to
>> get ($$), as they normally work as a bridge so you also need a
>> running MS Access server on a Windows PC.  On Windows, there may be
>> ODBC drivers that can directly read the MDB file, but I have no idea
>> about various flavors of Linux.
>
> Correct. GDAL/OGR 1.3.1 under Linux is not happy just saying for  
> example:
>
> $ ogrinfo SGID100_CountyBoundaries.mdb
> ERROR 1: Unable to initialize ODBC connection to DSN for  
> DRIVER=Microsoft
> Access Driver (*.mdb);DBQ=SGID100_CountyBoundaries.mdb,
> [unixODBC][Driver Manager]Data source name not found, and no default
> driver specified
>
> from http://agrc.its.state.ut.us/agrc_sgid/sgidlib/statewide_gdb.htm
>
> but under Windows XP (and clearly with the correct driver, although  
> I had
> no idea it might be there) ogrinfo works and ogr2ogr makes usable  
> output.
>
> So the quicker solution is to convert Personal Geodatabase data to a
> better supported format on a Windows machine, and use those copies.
>
> Has anyone an ODBC solution with an example of how to set up ODBC for
> *.mdb on Linux and/or Mac OSX?
>
>>
>> I have tried an Access ODBC driver on Mac OS X that can directly read
>> the MDB.  As shareware, it only works on the first 3 records of a
>> database until payed, but it seems to work.
>>

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos at kyngchaos.com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

"Those people who most want to rule people are, ipso-facto, those  
least suited to do it."

- A rule of the universe, from the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy