Geodatabase tables

[Steve Pashby]

Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam <at> POBOX.COM> writes:

> 
> Steve Pashby wrote:
> > Hello, 
> > 
> > I'm trying to render a road map using a personal geodatabase and have some 
> > event tables (or am going to ... when i get round to it !) However, i'm 
not 
> > entirely sure how you reference the tables in the mapfile. 
> > 
> > I know in the LAYER definition you would put ...
> > CONNECTIONTYPE ogr
> > CONNECTION "path/to/the/geodatabase, feature_class"
> > But how would you render whats in a specific table ?  (ie, I'm trying to 
show 
> > the location of poor road surfaces in a table called 
Poor_surface_condition)
> > 
> > Has someone else done this before and if so could you please post some of 
your 
> > code so i can see what to do. 
> 
> Steve,
> 
> I would encourage you to use instead:
> 
> CONNECTIONTYPE ogr
> CONNECTION "path/to/the/geodatabase"
> DATA "feature_class"
> 
> I'm not sure how Daniel or others feel about it, but I like to think of the
> syntax where the table/layer name is put into the CONNECTION string as
> deprecated in favor of the above format.
> 
> Addressing your actual question, I'm not sure why you seem to be
> distinguishing between "feature_class", "layer", and "table".  OGR will
> use the names of spatial tables (tables with a Shape column) as layers.
> 
> I have a vague sense there is a distinct thing called a feature class in
> the personal geodatabase, but OGR ignores this concept entirely (assuming the
> concept exists).
> 
> Best regards,
 ==============================================================================
Thanks very much for the reply Frank.  However, my tables are not specifically 
spatial tables (holding x,y coords), but rather they have a unique field 
(Route_ID) that is a link to a shapefile (containing road centre-line data) 
and each road has its own unique Route-ID. This is (i think) what links the 
two together.  

Anyway, maybe i am looking to much into it and OGR will do all the work !

Cheers, 
Steve.