[Mapserver-users] Using TIGER files

[Attri, Abhishek]

First of all thanks to all of you for such useful and encouraging
replies.
  Ok, I have already finished the report generation part for demographic
data (SF1 and SF3) using MySQL database and PHP. Now I have to add
mapping functionality. Can I create a MySQL database from TIGER\Line
files or they can only be used with dbase or PostgreSQL?
  Secondly, is the demographic data and TIGER\Line Files are enough to
create the mapping or I need any shape files along with that. I am
getting on to what you pointed out Steve and therefore would like to
clear this little confusion before doing it.
With thanks
Abhishek

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Hoffmann [mailto:jeff at propertykey.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 8:17 AM
To: woodbri at swoodbridge.com
Cc: Attri, Abhishek; mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: Re: [Mapserver-users] Using TIGER files

woodbri at swoodbridge.com wrote:
> Attri,
> 
> The Tiger/line files are useful for generating the base map and 
> extracting the polygons that relate back to the Census statistical 
> data. You will have to get the statistical data and relate that to 
> the polygons probably using JOIN to relate the polygon to the stats 
> and then use LAYER CLASSes to apply graphical (color/style/etc) 
> attributes to the polygons.
> 
> This implies that you can find the statistical data on the Census 
> website and load it into DBF files or Postgres so you can join it 
> with your polygon layer(s).

That's a great message.  The only other thing that I can add is that I 
have table layouts for both the SF1 and SF3 extracts that can be used to

import that data into PostgreSQL.  You can find them at
ftp://ftp.propertykey.com/pub/downloads/misc
They're called sf1.tar.gz & sf3.tar.gz and should work with the data 
that you can download from the Census web site -- I don't recall the 
specific location off the top of my head, but it shouldn't be hard to 
find.  Basically, the tables from there get linked to the census blocks 
information from the TIGER through a geo file.  There's no documentation

in my downloads, but it should be pretty straightforward.  All of the 
.sql files create the tables and import the data.  There's one little 
perl script that converts the geo file from fixed-length to 
tab-delimited so it can be imported, but all of the rest of the data 
files can be imported as is -- if I recall correctly they were comma 
delimited, which works fine for PostgreSQL.  As mentioned earlier, we 
used TIGER2SHP to convert the TIGER files to shape files to get the 
census block shape files for use with MapServer -- it's a nice little 
utility & i think is well worth the price.


-- 

Jeff Hoffmann
PropertyKey.com