SHP is a start, please provide data in ONE xml file
Requested By: PHenry
Tagged:
one xml
It's all fine and dandy to say you provide the data, however, it has diminishing returns if you provide it in a form which usable by the mass public (ex SHP format). IMHO, one data format supported should be one XML file which web services can indeed bring back and use. The SHP and KML formats, although are/have XML files, they are usable by GIS tools, not web services/cloud services. To help make this data useful for mobile/website developers, it needs to be obtainable in one file (and packaging as a zip file doesn't count when you're just masking it).
Votes in favour: 37%
Degree of contention:
Low
There are 12 comments:
posted May 13, 2010
SHP and KML formats are well-known standard formats, and machine-readable. I would rather have the city concentrate on releasing as many datasets as possible, as quickly as possible. Better to release 10 datasets in a suboptimal format than 1 in the perfect format.
It's up to the developer to take the data as it is provided, and learn how to manipulate it into the format he/she needs. As long as the data is in a standard, machine-accessible format, this is possible.
posted May 13, 2010
The City of Ottawa has planted 100,000 trees in the last 3 years as part of its Reforestation effort.
I would like a the following information on each tree lat, long, date planted, reason planted, tree type, age of tree when planted, picture of tree, current tree status.
I often worry that these trees are just replacement trees for dead trees in locations that will never properly grow trees.
posted May 13, 2010
hswerdfe, you should add your own request. It shouldn't be added as a comment to someone else's request.
posted May 13, 2010
I'm with Jason White on this one. It's the developer's responsibility to convert the data as they require.
posted May 14, 2010
Jason, Sorry about that I had opened to many tabs and was typing in the wrong input box. I realised after I submitted. but I couldn't find anyway to recall or delete the comment. My BAD!
posted May 14, 2010
I am no expert, but I have built several web-based mapping applications and it is my experience that shapefiles are the standard way of providing map data to be used for desktop or web based mapping applications. If you need to convert this to KML or something else, you can. I don't think you can easily convert the other way, so it seems to me that shapefiles are the appropriate format for this type of data.
I don't think it would be possible or desirable to provide all data in a single format. Choosing the most common, most open format is likely the best option.
posted May 15, 2010
I've converted the SHP files to MySQL GIS format using ogr2ogr. From there it's basic SQL work to create KML files as you desire, or generate javascript code to create GPolygon objects, etc, etc.
I haven't had time to test the data yet. Follow through to the link for a "mysqldump" of the database.
If you notice new content on ottawa.ca drop me an email (don't comment here - I may miss it). I'll rerun the converter and provide a new dump file.
http://kodonnell.ca/component/content/article/4-nerd/76-data-wants-to-be-free
posted May 18, 2010
The City is currently investigating sharing the open data files in other data file formats, including KML.
posted May 19, 2010
SHP is a great start. As mentioned by Kevin you can use OGR to convert your data into a number of formats.
It might be worth looking into WMS/WFS as an online transport for the spatial information should users not want to have the data locally. That, of course, comes with its own set of requirements and limitations.
posted Aug 1, 2010
I took the mysql file that Kevin created and built kml files for each. http://www.mapottawa.ca/
posted Sep 1, 2010
The City is also working with the cities of Edmonton, Toronto, and Vancouver to look at issues such as data formats and standards as well as our terms of use and possibilities of a common data catalogue.
posted Nov 24, 2010
Even a simple CSV with both the coordinates and the data (from the .dbf) would be way more helpful than the current ZIP release form.
And yes, every single developer could find/write code to parse out this data, but that is not what this is about!!! Open the data please.
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