Several days ago I broached the subject that it seems that MapInfo products
might be able to rely on Oracle's 8i-Lite as a way to get on-board the
Oracle train.
Oracle 8i-Lite is a small foot-print object database with sufficient
capability to do the database stuff most of require. Having the Oracle
advantage I am fairly certain is important to all MapInfo users. We have a
unique angle in only MapInfo products seem to have the direct connection to
8i design.
I copy you a summary from the AkeView camp regarding reliance on xBASE
and/or Excel.
The summary from Dr Ramm seems to help identify issues that could lead to
further discussion of Oracle 8i-Lite's role for the MapInfo Professional
user and/or the MapX developer.
And many thanks to Dr. Ramm with Young Harris College ....
FYI
MidNight Mapper
aka Neil
*********************** CLIP **************
SUMMARY BY:
Hartmut Ramm
P.O. Box 156
1 College Street
Young Harris College
Young Harris, Georgia
30582
706-379-3111, ext. 5154 (O)
706-379-4306 (Fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
A million thanks to all of the flood of replies to my question. I am
greatly enlightened. Thanks, explicitly to Nick Nicholas, Dave Laplante,
Erik K, Myrna Larson, Lisa McKay, Bill Chappel, Tim Glover, Mark Harrington,
Steve Lowman, Ray Summer, Peter van Demark, Susan Meyers, Cody Zook,
Christopher Jason, Charles Tompkins and Ian Watson, and Ruth Bowers, and
Terese Rowekamp. THANK YOU ALL A THOUSAND TIMES. I LEARNED SO MUCH.
THE ORIGINAL QUESTION WAS:
Hi List,
I am having a terrible time with importing table data created in
Excel into ArcView. ArcView does not accept the .xls format, so I have
tried saving the .xls files as tab delimited .txt files and as comma
delimited .csv. Incredibly, after creating the files, Excel cannot open
them, and slaps me with the "SYLK: format not valid error message."
In a previous message on a related theme, I was informed that only
comma-delimited files can be used by ArcView. I have since learned that
this is not necessarily true, though the tab-delimited files are not very
robust. I tried saving the .csv files as .txt files in wordpad, but then
ArcView truncated everything after the first column!!
Dbase files created in Excel are even less robust, maiming
headers and playing fast and loose with number, date and text formats. Is
there no smooth way to create ArcView files from table data? Is there
another program out there that does a better job than Excel (My experience
with that abortion has me cheering wildly whenever the subject of breaking
up Microsoft is raised.)
Most of the answers suggested that I create dBase tables by
exporting to Access and then import into ArcView. Others suggested that I
abandon Excel for Access. For various reasons this is inconvenient.
Ruth Bowers offered some essential information about dBase fiels that is
obviously essential to the uesr of that format (So why is it not found in
the Excel Help files?). A copy of that reply follows:
dBASE file limitations
- Limited to a maximum of 255 fields
- Only uppercase A-Z, numbers, and _ (underscores) are allowed in field
names. Invalid characters such as # or - are replaced with _ characters.
Lower case letters are converted to upper case when stored in the dBASE
file.
- Field names must start with a letter. If you try to use an underscore or a
number as the first character in the field name, ArcView will convert it to
Z when saving the field ("9field" is converted to "ZFIELD"). (This was
another vexing problem that I encountered, cluelessly [HR])
- Field names are limited to 10 characters.
- A String field can contain a maximum of 254 characters.
So, for example, when your field called Description is changed to
DESCRIPTIO, you will know why.
Another clue: manually format your fields in the other software, rather
than by accepting default formatting. Sometimes the way another software
interprets a default is very different from the way the original software
intended it.
Good Luck!
Ruth
Charles Tompkins had more useful information about dBase files
I use Excel to edit and manage my AV databases all the time. There are just
a couple of things that you have to pay attention to, and they are DB file
format constraints not AV or Excell problems.
1) Be damn sure your column headers are less than 8 characters wide and
contain no spaces. 2) Make sure that you have no hidden formulas or
formats before you export. Do this by highlighting the whole table (in
Excel), copy it, paste special [values only] back onto itself. 3) Expand
all columns so that none of your data are hidden. 4) If you're going back
and forth from Excel or AV, make an index field in AV and then the second
you bring it into Excel populate it with 1 to n. Before you export back out
as a .dbf, sort on the index field, otherwise you are apt to have mismatches
between your vtab and ftab [or whatever tabs it is that AV uses to link
locations and attributes]
I'd be interested in your SUM: the caveats above are the product of trial
and error and I hope that there is a better way to do it.
Cheers
Chaz
Terese Rowekamp had the answer to my puzzlement over the truncation of my
text files after saving them in Wordpad
One comment on your comments below - when ArcView truncates a comma- or
tab-separated text to just one column in your ArcView table, it's an
indication that the header line in the text file does not match the first
line of data below the header line. In other words, if your file looks like
this:
field1,field2,field3 a,b,c,d
where the number of headers in the first line indicates 3 columns, but the
first line of data contains 4 values, ArcView will only bring in one column
of data. If the discrepancy is not on the first line of data, ArcView brings
in all the data fields, but some records will be messed up.
Terese Rowekamp
However, there is an easier way to change the extension from .csv to .txt,
as I learned from Earl K. this was really a Windows problem. I did not
know how to make Windows show the extension. Here, in Earl's words, is how:
You can change the name or extension of a file in most any File, Open
dialog, or in the Windows Explorer. Click the file name, and click it a
second time (on the name, not on the icon). Or you can press F2. Either puts
it into edit mode. Make your change and press Enter.
Myrna Larson Solved the most maddening of all of my problems: the SYLK
error message that arose when I tried to open in Excel a textfile created in
Excel. It turns out that my first colomn header was "ID". that is code for
the SYLK format. (Try finding that in the Excel Help files).
Hartmut Ramm
P.O. Box 156
1 College Street
Young Harris College
Young Harris, Georgia
30582
706-379-3111, ext. 5154 (O)
706-379-4306 (Fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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