[postgis-users] Importing timezone shape files - newbie

[Scott Chapman]

Can someone explain the difference between the two types of shape
files and the advantages/disadvantages of each in more general terms?

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 1:27 AM, Nicolas Ribot <nicolas.ribot at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm using PG 9.1.3 with pgAdmin 1.14.2 on Windows 7 Home Edition to
>> get familiar with PostGIS and TimeZone data.
>> PostGIS 1.5.3 is installed and the postgis database was created by the
>> installer.
>>
>> My immediate end goal is to be able to take a Lat/Lon and query PG to
>> find the correct time zone for the location.
>>
>> I installed the "PostGIS Shapefile and DBF loader" plugin in pgAdmin
>> but it is greyed out in the Plugins menu.
>>
>> I found this site with the shape files:
>>
>> http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/
>>
>> It has two shape files:
>>
>> "The tz_world shapefile captures the boundaries of the TZ timezones
>> across the world, as of TZ 2011b. The geometries are all POLYGONs, and
>> a TZ timezone will sometimes have multiple polygons. There are about
>> 28,000 rows.
>>
>> The tz_world_mp shapefile captures the same boundaries. The geometries
>> are either POLYGONs or MULTIPOLYGONs, and there is a single geometry
>> for each TZ timezone. There are 394 rows."
>>
>> First question is, Which shape file to use.  I don't understand the
>> difference between the two and the merits of each.
>>
>> Secondly, clues on how to import this data correctly.
>>
>> Any other pointers are welcome!  I'm not sure yet, how to do the SQL
>> to make the query.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Scott
>
> Hi Scott,
>
> Can't tell which file is better. It really depends on what you want to do.
>
> Concerning loading file to postgis, you can use the command line
> shp2pgsql program:
>
> shp2pgsql -IiDS -s 4326 -g geom tz_world.shp timezone | psql gis20
>
> (running shp2pgsql without arguments will give you the list of
> available switches).
>
> Nicolas
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