using ogr2ogr to create pt shp file from dbf w/ lat-lon fields

[Emilio Mayorga]

> Well, there are indeed many deficiencies in GDAL/OGR and MapServer
> documentation.   The assistance of you, and other community members
> is critical in improving the documentation, so thanks for your willingness
> to dig in!

I will make the edits later. Please see below for a known FWTools bug
I ran into, and solved thanks to an earlier posting from you.

> > Now I have a different problem. I'm running MapServer 4.0 on a Linux
> > box with OGR 1.1.9. I read that OVF was introduced in OGR 1.2.0 (and
> > in fact, my ogr2ogr line can't handle the ovf file!). Given my old
> > MapServer, do you think it'd be safe to upgrade GDAL/OGR to the latest
> > version without upgrading MapServer (I don't want to deal with all the
> > dependencies just yet)?
>
> Note that while OVF (which I call OGR VRT) support may have been
> introduced in 1.2.0, there were also numerous fixes and improvements
> in the facility right through to 1.3.1.

I installed the current FWTools (1.0.0a7) on both Windows and Linux.
Everything works fine on Windows. (BTW, I think the syntax is much
more consistent now). But on Linux I ran into the FWTools/ogr2ogr bug
described (and solved) here:
http://lists.maptools.org/pipermail/fwtools/2006-February/000304.html
Your solution worked great.

> To answer your question, I believe MapServer 4.0 should work just fine
> with GDAL/OGR 1.3.1.  While I respect your need to manage risk in upgrading,
> it is generally hard to support people using significantly old versions
> of the software.  When answering I certainly never thought you might
> be running such old versions of MapServer or GDAL/OGR.   So, I would
> encourage you to upgrade to the latest stable release of things when
> you can if you are hoping for assistance, or bug fixes.

I fully understand, no worries. I do plan to upgrade MapServer and all
dependencies, I just haven't had time...

Thanks so much for all your help.

-Emilio