Making .dbf, .shp, and .shx files

[Paul G. Allen]

At the risk of looking stupid...

A couple people told me I could make shape files containing the shapes of all
the county maps I have so that I can tile them into one larger map. This makes
perfect sense to me. Since every county map already has a county shape file, I
already have the shape data. Since I am quite a novice at this: How do I combine
all the various shape files into a single shape file? How do I combine the
various .shx and .dbf that accompany these shape files into corresponding files
to go along with the single county shape file?

What would really be nice is:

1. Have a map of the entire continental US with each state outlined, and a
couple smaller maps containing the US territories (American Samoa, the Pacific
Territories, Alaska, etc.).
2. The user clicks on a state/territory and is then given another map of that
state with the various counties outlines.
3. The user can then zoom/pan/query that map to find what he/she needs.

I've read in to documentation that it's possible to set a maximum scale so that
the interface can change from one map to another - zoom out too far in a county
map, and the entire state is displayed, or maybe the surrounding counties are
tiled to make a slightly larger (more coverage)  map. I assume you can get the
same result in the other direction? (Zoom in too far in the state map and you
get a county or several counties.) What if you pan off the edge of a map?
Something else I'd like to do in the immediate future: Plot my own data on a
map. The data is retrieved via text email messages. The data includes LAT/LONG
position and various pieces of information regarding the status of a field unit.
I'd like to be able to take this type of data from an arbitrary number of units,
concatenate it into a single set of ESRI files, and display/query it just like
I'm doing with current map data. How difficult is this and are the tools for it
already included/supplied? (remember, I'm a novice at this and only have about
16hrs. total experience with MapServer - the first 8 involved making the first
map of San Diego :)

BTW, I've updated my San Diego map and added Cook County, IL to my test web site
with enhanced 1997-98 data from the Census. (My wife used to live near Chicago
:) Again the URL is:
24.5.14.144 or http://cx570538-a.elcjn1.sdca.home.com.

PGA