[postgis-users] Enormous file geodatabase feature class > PostgreSQL/PostGIS? + attribute column standardization app or process?

[Nicolas Ribot]

> Is there a utility for importing an ESRI file
> geodatabase into PostgreSQL/PostGIS? I know there's a
> tool for importing shapefiles, but that won't help--or
> will it?

You may have a look at OGR (http://www.gdal.org/ogr/ogr_formats.html),
according to the geodatabase format (personnal, SDE,...)

>
> I (will soon) have a large feature class of ~14
> counties of parcel data, with the attributes already
> standardized, stored in a single feature class in a
> geodatabase. Not sure of the size, but it could easily
> be ~7 gig. Ultimately, I want to import parcel data
> for 100 counties into PostgreSQL.
>
> Short of exporting a 14 to 100 county file geodatabase
> back out to one gynormous shapefile (at least on
> Windows, I imagine that might break file size
> limitations), do I have any other options? Is there
> some other format (CAD?) I could export out of a file
> geodatabase for importing into PostgreSQL/PostGIS?
>
> I know I could import the shapefiles one-by-one, but I
> don't have an application that would standardize
> parcel attributes going in--the standardization
> already performed may have been done as a (tedious)
> manual process.
>
> That said, does anyone have an attribute column
> standardizer app (preferably written in Python so I
> could tweak it), where I could feed it a field mapping
> / lookup table of all the counties and which source
> fields should become target fields in the merged data
> set?
>
> And are there any known limitations on the size of
> feature classes (or whatever they may be called in
> PostGIS) you can manipulate with reasonable speeds?
> e.g. anyone here storing terabytes of polygon or line
> data in PostGIS and having no trouble with it? I mean
> for massive concurrent access, not just as a
> single-user DSS. My system will be an OLAP, not an
> OLTP--so once the data is loaded, there won't be much
> editing to speak of. New parcel data, per county, over
> time will replace old parcel data.

No known limitation on record size or number of records in PostGIS.
Performance will depend on your hardware running PG (see posts about
tuning and performance parameters in PostgreSQL) and spatial index
when retrieving data.

>
> Finally, does it look like ESRI will ever open its
> geodatabase format in the way they've opened up the
> shapefile? I tend to doubt it, considering all the
> stored procedures and triggers it must use to maintain
> the consistency of the data. But still, someone could
> do an implementation of it if the geodatabase format
> was fully documented and opened to others like they
> did with the shapefile.
>
> Otherwise, I see no real commitment to
> interoperability--with the geodatabase being ESRI's
> format / data model / whatever you want to call it /
> of choice.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Dana
>