[GRASS-user] Managing the Harmonized World Soil Database in GRASS

GRASS GRASS user
1

Dear Rich,



> The HWSD is composed of a raster image file and a linked attribute database 
> stored in Microsoft Access 2003 format.
    


   It would be nice if the attributes were made available in a format using
open standards. That would make it available to those of us who don't do
windows.

Rich

You are right.

There is a driver apparently more advanced than the OpenOffice.org one, which I haven’t tried yet:
http://www.kexi-project.org/wiki/wikiview/index.php@MDBDriver.html

I have inquired the data provider about the issue, and will let the list know.

Kind regards,

Luigi

2

On Fri, 25 Mar 2011, Luigi Ponti wrote:

There is a driver apparently more advanced than the OpenOffice.org one,
which I haven't tried yet:
http://www.kexi-project.org/wiki/wikiview/index.php@MDBDriver.html

Luigi,

   How interesting! I use OO.o to translate .doc to .odt and .xls to ods, but
it has not occurred to me to try it with a .mdb file. I suppose that is
because almost all my writing is done in LyX/LaTeX and I have little need
for spreadsheets so I don't use OO.o unless I must.

Thank you for the idea and URL,

Rich

3

Dear Rich,



> The HWSD is composed of a raster image file and a linked attribute database 
> stored in Microsoft Access 2003 format.
    


   It would be nice if the attributes were made available in a format using
open standards. That would make it available to those of us who don't do
windows.

Rich

You are right.

[…]

I have inquired the data provider about the issue, and will let the list know.

Here is what the data provider replied:

"Thank you for your suggestion. The raster file is already available in an open format, since it is just a binary table.

In the database file (HWSD.mdb), there is one main table in the database, the HWSD_Data table, that contains all the soil data. The other tables simply describe the codes and abbreviations. The simplest and most transferable option would be to export this HWSD_Data as a text file along with a document listing all the codes and abbreviations. At the moment, anyone with Access can do this for others. However, your point is well taken and we will consider making such a text file and perhaps other database formats available on our website with our next update.

The viewer cannot so easily be transferred to other operating systems and we have no plan to do so."

Kind regards,

Luigi