FWTools 1.1.0 for Linux and Win32 published

Frank Warmerdam has published the new FWTools 1.1.0 binaries for linux and win32. FWTools includes OpenEV, GDAL, MapServer, PROJ.4 and OGDI as well as some supporting components. Basic changes are in the Linux version which now includes the addition of PostgreSQL support in OGR, and SOS Server support in MapServer. This release also includes the new, experimental, PDS (Planetary Data) format support. Download from:

https://www.gdal.org/dl/fwtools/FWTools110.exe
https://www.gdal.org/dl/fwtools/FWTools-linux-1.1.0.tar.gz

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European Soil Databases "freely" available as vector maps now

To my surprise I found an announcement from last week, that the “European Soil Databases” (ESDB) are freely available to the public. In the light of the new INSPIRE directive, the combination of freely & public for European data will apparently remain rare. Of course we are talking free beer/lunch here since “The data are made available for research purposes only and not for any other activity […] The permission to use … under no circumstances are these data passed to third parties.” and so forth. I feel that our taxpayers money was used to prepare these data.

How to obtain the “European Soil Databases”? You have to send a MS-Word (!) document to them to register. This file opens with a little layout mess in OpenOffice. When will they switch to open document formats (read: ASCII for this purpose or HTML form)? But we should not complain too much of course. Just submitted, let’s wait for the non-free (in the sense of freedom) data now…

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Tip of the day: getting Excel/Access into PostgreSQL

Do you also dislike it to manually convert Excel tables into PostgreSQL? Not having real fun in exporting to CSV, then manually writing the SQL header and importing the stuff in PG? After messing around with tools like csv2sql.pl, xbase2pg and other stuff, I found this great article today:

Bringing data into OpenOffice 2.0’s database by Solveig Haugland

It explains how to get data out of one database, such as Access, into an OpenOffice database table. Using for example the PostgreSQL driver, the data will then be directly stored there. Essentially you open the Excel (or whatever) table with OpenOffice-Calc, select and copy the full table or a subset to the clipboard, and simply paste it into OpenOffice-Base with the right mouse button. A wizard pops up which let’s you define the type of each column and a primary key. Save & done. Can’t be easier!

Find a more detailed page on how to connect OpenOffice-Base to various DBMS here.

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PyWPS 1.0.0 released: GRASS goes Web

Today PyWPS 1.0.0 has been released by Jachym Cepicky. PyWPS (Python Web Processing Service) implements the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) standard in Python programming language. It has been written with native support for GRASS GIS which allows for accessing GRASS modules via Web. Processes can be run asynchronously. By default, GRASS GIS is supported, other tools (R, GDAL/OGR, PROJ.4, …) can be configured, too.

A first demo application can be seen here: WUIW – a PyWPS AJAX Web Interface.

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New QGIS Native Windows package with GRASS GIS Support

Tim Sutton reports that he has packaged QGIS as native Windows version bundled with GRASS GIS. Details are available in his blog, and the package with installer can be downloaded.

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