[Mapserver-users] Using TIGER files

[Joe Bussell]

Does anyone already have the Tiger files parsed into shapfile/dbf? 
Specifically I am looking for cities, counties, rivers, rail, and road.

Cordially,

Joe Bussell
www.trafficdodger.com


woodbri at swoodbridge.com wrote:
> The TIGER/Line files by themselves are not useful for creating a map. 
> You would be better off getting some shapefiles. Also MySQL is not 
> really supported for doing JOINs with shapefiles. I think your 
> options are:
> 
> 1) extract the demographics data into DBF files that you can join 
> with the shapefiles - this means you have to have a common attribute 
> in both the shapefile DBFs and demographics DBFs to do the JOIN on.
> 
> 2) load all the shapefiles into PostgreSQL and load the demographics 
> into it also.
> 
> You also should work out a trivial test case so you know what the 
> requirements of all the pieces are before you try and do this with 
> TONS of data only to find out that it doesn't work the way you 
> thought it would :-/
> 
> Can anyone speak to which versions of mapserver support JOINs? I 
> think you have to be on either MS-3.3 or MS-4.0 to get JOINS to work, 
> but I'm not sure.
> 
> -Steve
> 
> On 17 Jul 2003 at 14:14, Attri, Abhishek wrote:
> 
> 
>>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
>>
>>
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> 
> 
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