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<title>ESRI Personal GeoDatabase</title>
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  <h1>ESRI Personal GeoDatabase</h1>

<p>OGR optionally supports reading ESRI Personal GeoDatabase .mdb
  files via ODBC. Personal GeoDatabase is a Microsoft Access
  database with a set of tables defined by ESRI for holding
  geodatabase metadata, and with geometry for features held in a
  BLOB column in a custom format (essentially Shapefile geometry
  fragments). This drivers accesses the personal geodatabase via
  ODBC but does not depend on any ESRI middle-ware.</p>

<p>Personal Geodatabases are accessed by passing the file name of
  the .mdb file to be accessed as the data source name. On Windows,
  no ODBC DSN is required. On Linux, there are problems with DSN-less
  connection due to incomplete or buggy implementation of this feature
  in the <a href="http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/">MDB Tools</a> package,
  So, it is required to configure Data Source Name (DSN) if the MDB
  Tools driver is used (check instructions below).</p>

<p>In order to facilitate compatibility with different configurations,
  the PGEO_DRIVER_TEMPLATE Config Option was added to provide a way to
  programmatically set the DSN programmatically with the filename as
  an argument.   In cases where the driver name is known, this allows for
  the construction of the DSN based on that information in a manner similar
  to the default (used for Windows access to the Microsoft Access Driver).</p>

<p>OGR treats all feature tables as layers. Most geometry types
  should be supported, including 3D data. Measures information will
  be discarded. Coordinate system information should be properly
  associated with layers.</p>

<p>Currently the OGR Personal Geodatabase driver does not take
  advantage of spatial indexes for fast spatial queries, though
  that may be added in the future.</p>

<p>By default, SQL statements are passed directly to the MDB database engine.
It's also possible to request the driver to handle SQL commands
with <a href="ogr_sql.html">OGR SQL</a> engine,
by passing <strong>"OGRSQL"</strong> string to the ExecuteSQL()
method, as name of the SQL dialect.</p>

<h2>How to use PGeo driver with unixODBC and MDB Tools (on Unix and Linux)</h2>

<p>Starting with GDAL/OGR 1.9.0, the <a href="drv_mdb.html">MDB</a> driver is an alternate
     way of reading ESRI Personal GeoDatabase .mdb files without requiring unixODBC and MDB Tools</p>

<p>This article gives step-by-step explanation of how to use OGR
  with unixODBC package and how to access Personal Geodatabase with
  PGeo driver. See also <a href="http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/mdbtools">GDAL wiki for other details</a></p>

<h3>Prerequisites</h3>

<ol>
    <li>Install <a href="http://www.unixodbc.org">unixODBC</a>
    &gt;= 2.2.11</li>

<li>Install <a href="http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/">MDB
    Tools</a> &gt;= 0.6. I also tested with 0.5.99 (0.6
    pre-release).</li>
  </ol>

<p>(On Ubuntu 8.04 : sudo apt-get install unixodbc libmdbodbc)</p>

<h3>Configuration</h3>

<p>There are two configuration files for unixODBC:</p>

<ul>
    <li>odbcinst.ini - this file contains definition of ODBC
    drivers available to all users; this file can be found in /etc
    directory or location given as --sysconfdir if you did build
    unixODBC yourself.</li>

<li>odbc.ini - this file contains definition of ODBC data
    sources (DSN entries) available to all users.</li>

<li>~/.odbc.ini - this is the private file where users can put
    their own ODBC data sources.</li>
  </ul>

<p>Format of configuration files is very simple:</p>
  <pre>
[section_name]
entry1 = value
entry2 = value
</pre>

<p>For more details, refer to <a href=
  "http://www.unixodbc.org/doc/">unixODBC manual</a>.</p>

<h4>1. ODBC driver configuration</h4>

<p>First, you need to configure ODBC driver to access Microsoft
  Access databases with MDB Tools. Add following definition to your
  odbcinst.ini file.</p>
  <pre>
[Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)]
Description = MDB Tools ODBC drivers
Driver     = /usr/lib/libmdbodbc.so.0
Setup      =
FileUsage  = 1
CPTimeout  =
CPReuse    =
</pre>

<ul>
    <li>[Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)] - remember to use
    "Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)" as the name of section
    because PGeo driver composes ODBC connection string for
    Personal Geodatabase using "DRIVER=Microsoft Access Driver
    (*.mdb);" string.</li>

<li>Description - put short description of this driver
    definition.</li>

<li>Driver - full path of ODBC driver for MDB Tools.</li>
  </ul>

<h4>2. ODBC data source configuration</h4>

<p>In this section, I use 'sample.mdb' as a name of Personal
  Geodatabase, so replace this name with your own database.</p>

<p>Create .odbc.ini file in your HOME directory:</p>
  <pre>
$ touch ~/.odbc.ini
</pre>

<p>Put following ODBC data source definition to your .odbc.ini
  file:</p>
  <pre>
[sample_pgeo]
Description = Sample PGeo Database
Driver      = Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)
Database    = /home/mloskot/data/sample.mdb
Host        = localhost
Port        = 1360
User        = mloskot
Password    =
Trace       = Yes
TraceFile   = /home/mloskot/odbc.log
</pre>

<p>Step by step explanation of DSN entry:</p>

<ul>
    <li>[sample_pgeo] - this is name of ODBC data source (DSN). You
    will refer to your Personal Geodatabase using this name. You
    can use your own name here.</li>

<li>Description - short description of the DSN entry.</li>

<li>Driver - full name of driver defined in step 1. above.</li>

<li>Database - full path to .mdb file with your Personal
    Geodatabase.</li>

<li>Host, Port, User and Password entries are not used by MDB
    Tools driver.</li>
  </ul>

<h3>Testing PGeo driver with ogrinfo</h3>

<p>Now, you can try to access PGeo data source with ogrinfo.</p>

<p>First, check if you have PGeo driver built in OGR:</p>
  <pre>
$ ogrinfo --formats
Supported Formats:
  ESRI Shapefile
  ...
  PGeo
  ...
</pre>

<p>Now, you can access your Personal Geodatabase. As a data
  source use PGeo:&lt;DSN&gt; where &lt;DSN&gt; is a name of DSN
  entry you put to your .odbc.ini.</p>
  <pre>
ogrinfo PGeo:sample_pgeo
INFO: Open of `PGeo:sample_pgeo'
using driver `PGeo' successful.
1. ...
</pre>After you run the command above, you should get list of
layers stored in your geodatabase.

<p>Now, you can try to query details of particular layer:</p>
  <pre>
ogrinfo PGeo:sample_pgeo &lt;layer name&gt;
INFO: Open of `PGeo:sample_pgeo'
using driver `PGeo' successful.

Layer name: ...
</pre>

<h2>Resources</h2>

<ul>
      <li><a href="http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/geodatabase/index.html">About ESRI Geodatabase</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=5998236">[mdbtools-dev] DSN-less connection not supported?</a></li>
  </ul>

<ul>
  <li><a href="drv_mdb.html">MDB</a> driver page</li>
  </ul>

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