[GRASS-user] Geodatabase and GRASS GIS - how to get the data out of a geodatabase

[Markus Neteler]

On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 3:23 AM, stephen sefick<ssefick at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a GIS database that is in .mdb format (microsoft access).  I
> have found mdb tools through my debian package manager, but now I
> don't know how to get the data out of the the database and into GRASS.
>  There are x and y coordinates and other things in the database.  Is
> there a tutorial on how to get the data into GRASS from this database?

I see two ways:

1) via unixODBC
For Linux, you need "unixODBC" to be installed (your preferred distribution
most likely contains this package). As done, get also the MDB Tools,
compile it with unixodbc support enabled if not already done.
Then follow instructions at http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_pgeo.html

2) via R

R
install.packages('Hmisc', dependencies=TRUE)
library(Hmisc)
# Read all tables in the Microsoft Access database blabla.mdb
#   perhaps better change to Locale in which the .mdb file was
#   generated to avoid that accented table column names are
#   getting lost.file first
d <- mdb.get('/path/to/blabla.mdb')
contents(d)
for(z in 1:length(d)) print(attributes(d)$names[z])


There you are. Now write out to something else with the "foreign"
package:

install.packages('RSQLite', dependencies=TRUE)
library(RSQLite)
drv <- dbDriver("SQLite")
con <- dbConnect(drv, dbname = '/tmp/blabla.db')
dbWriteTable(con, "mynewtable", d)
dbDisconnect(con)

Now you can open '/tmp/blabla.db'  with 'sqlite3' or
other software, e.g. GRASS (import with db.in.ogr).

Cheers
Markus