[Qgis-user] Swiss Knife. (ogr2ogr GUI and more)

[Peter Bange]

Hi There,

I am doing my best to get people in my organization use Q-gis in combination with a postgres/postgis database. I found out that not many GIS specialists are familiar with (relational) databases. Some of my collegues use ArcGIS, others MapInfo.  All the data are stored as shape and tab files. To help them get used to storing (all) their data in a database I developed a tool. I have nick named it Swiss Knife, you can do a number of different things with it:

- You can store Q-gis projects in the database
- There is a meta-system to store and search information on all the tables you add or change
- It allows to redirect information from a number of tables to one single table
- It allows you to generate a trigger on tables that will make postgres keep a log of all changes
- It generates pgSQLcode that will generate a view on this table and its log that will reconstruct historical situations
- It offers a GUI around ogr2ogr that makes conversion between formats easyer
- When you generate shape files etc. from a postgis table, you can lock the records exported. This allows integeration of the database with ArcGIS, MapInfo users etc. (I prefer Qgis, but ...), these records can then be read, but not changed by others
- When reimporting such shape etc. files again into the database the records are unlocked for edit by others
- It can transform a simple ascii rasterfile to a table with square polygons (vectorization)
- There is a tool that helps generating vieuws for use with Qgis (can ensure a unique key)
- There is a little trick to help adding texts in Qgis easier, it could be expanded
- You can create copies of GIS tables

The tool is written in REALbasic, I generate executables for Mac and Windows, did not try it for Linux but that should not be difficult. I have no intention of making this tool for sale or something, just help to promote Qgis. Anyone interested ? It is in a beta stage, but it is starting to gain speed ...

It needs some tables to run, I will supply these to anyone who wants them. There is also a first draft of a user manual.

Peter Bange