Exploring Data Formats and Fields¶

ESRI Shapefiles¶

The ESRI shapefile is still one of the most used vector file format in QGIS. However, this file format has some limitation that some other file format have not (like Geopackage, spatialite). Support is provided by the OGR Simple Feature Library.

A shapefile actually consists of several files. The following three are required:

1. .shp file containing the feature geometries
2. .dbf file containing the attributes in dBase format
3. .shx index file

Shapefiles also can include a file with a .prj suffix, which contains the projection information. While it is very useful to have a projection file, it is not mandatory. A shapefile dataset can contain additional files. For further details, see the ESRI technical specification at http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf.

Improving Performance for Shapefiles

To improve the performance of drawing a shapefile, you can create a spatial index. A spatial index will improve the speed of both zooming and panning. Spatial indexes used by QGIS have a .qix extension.

Use these steps to create the index:

• Load a shapefile (see The Browser Panel);
• Open the Layer Properties dialog by double-clicking on the shapefile name in the legend or by right-clicking and choosing Properties from the context menu.
• In the General tab, click the [Create Spatial Index] button.

Problem loading a shape .prj file

If you load a shapefile with a .prj file and QGIS is not able to read the coordinate reference system from that file, you will need to define the proper projection manually within the General tab of the Layer Properties dialog of the layer by clicking the [Specify...] button. This is due to the fact that .prj files often do not provide the complete projection parameters as used in QGIS and listed in the CRS dialog.

For the same reason, if you create a new shapefile with QGIS, two different projection files are created: a .prj file with limited projection parameters, compatible with ESRI software, and a .qpj file, providing the complete parameters of the used CRS. Whenever QGIS finds a .qpj file, it will be used instead of the .prj.

Delimited Text Files¶

Tabular data is a very common and widely used format because of its simplicity and readability – data can be viewed and edited even in a plain text editor. A delimited text file is an attribute table with each column separated by a defined character and each row separated by a line break. The first row usually contains the column names. A common type of delimited text file is a CSV (Comma Separated Values), with each column separated by a comma.

Such data files can also contain positional information in two main forms:

• As point coordinates in separate columns
• As well-known text (WKT) representation of geometry

QGIS allows you to load a delimited text file as a layer or ordinal table. But first check that the file meets the following requirements:

1. The file must have a delimited header row of field names. This must be the first line in the text file.
2. The header row must contain field(s) with geometry definition. These field(s) can have any name.
3. The X and Y coordinates (if geometry is defined by coordinates) must be specified as numbers. The coordinate system is not important.
4. If you have any data that is not a string (text) and the file is a CSV file, you must have a CSVT file (see section CSVT Files).

As an example of a valid text file, we import the elevation point data file elevp.csv that comes with the QGIS sample dataset (see section Sample Data):

X;Y;ELEV
-300120;7689960;13
-654360;7562040;52
1640;7512840;3
[...]

Some items to note about the text file:

1. The example text file uses ; (semicolon) as delimiter. Any character can be used to delimit the fields.
2. The first row is the header row. It contains the fields X, Y and ELEV.
3. No quotes (") are used to delimit text fields.
4. The X coordinates are contained in the X field.
5. The Y coordinates are contained in the Y field.

"Integer","Real","String"

"Integer(6)","Real(5.5)","String(22)"

Label;WKT_geom
CircularString;CIRCULARSTRING(268 415,227 505,227 406)
CurvePolygon;CURVEPOLYGON(CIRCULARSTRING(1 3, 3 5, 4 7, 7 3, 1 3))
CompoundCurve;COMPOUNDCURVE((5 3, 5 13), CIRCULARSTRING(5 13, 7 15,
  9 13), (9 13, 9 3), CIRCULARSTRING(9 3, 7 1, 5 3))

LINESTRINGM(10.0 20.0 30.0, 11.0 21.0 31.0)

PostGIS Layers¶

PostGIS layers are stored in a PostgreSQL database. The advantages of PostGIS are its spatial indexing, filtering and querying capabilities it provides. Using PostGIS, vector functions such as select and identify work more accurately than they do with OGR layers in QGIS.

This section contains some details on how QGIS accesses PostgreSQL layers. Most of the time, QGIS should simply provide you with a list of database tables that can be loaded, and it will load them on request. However, if you have trouble loading a PostgreSQL table into QGIS, the information below may help you understand any QGIS messages and give you direction on changing the PostgreSQL table or view definition to allow QGIS to load it.

SET XML OPTION DOCUMENT;

Importing Data into PostgreSQL¶

Data can be imported into PostgreSQL/PostGIS using several tools, including the DB Manager plugin and the command line tools shp2pgsql and ogr2ogr.

shp2pgsql -s 2964 lakes.shp lakes_new | psql gis_data

ogr2ogr -f "PostgreSQL" PG:"dbname=postgis host=myhost.de user=postgres
password=topsecret" alaska.shp

ogrinfo --formats | grep -i post

export PG_USE_COPY=YES

CREATE INDEX [indexname] ON [tablename]
  USING GIST ( [geometryfield] GIST_GEOMETRY_OPS );

gsherman@madison:~/current$ psql gis_data
Welcome to psql 8.3.0, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
       \h for help with SQL commands
       \? for help with psql commands
       \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
       \q to quit

gis_data=# CREATE INDEX sidx_alaska_lakes ON alaska_lakes
gis_data-# USING GIST (the_geom GIST_GEOMETRY_OPS);
CREATE INDEX
gis_data=# VACUUM ANALYZE alaska_lakes;
VACUUM
gis_data=# \q
gsherman@madison:~/current$

Vector layers crossing 180° longitude¶

Many GIS packages don’t wrap vector maps with a geographic reference system (lat/lon) crossing the 180 degrees longitude line (http://postgis.refractions.net/documentation/manual-2.0/ST_Shift_Longitude.html). As result, if we open such a map in QGIS, we will see two far, distinct locations, that should appear near each other. In Figure_vector_crossing, the tiny point on the far left of the map canvas (Chatham Islands) should be within the grid, to the right of the New Zealand main islands.

Map in lat/lon crossing the 180° longitude line

A work-around is to transform the longitude values using PostGIS and the ST_Shift_Longitude function. This function reads every point/vertex in every component of every feature in a geometry, and if the longitude coordinate is < 0°, it adds 360° to it. The result is a 0° - 360° version of the data to be plotted in a 180°-centric map.

Crossing 180° longitude applying the ST_Shift_Longitude function

SpatiaLite Layers¶

If you want to save a vector layer to SpatiaLite format, you can do this by right clicking the layer in the legend. Then, click on Save as..., define the name of the output file, and select ‘SpatiaLite’ as format and the CRS. Also, you can select ‘SQLite’ as format and then add SPATIALITE=YES in the OGR data source creation option field. This tells OGR to create a SpatiaLite database. See also http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_sqlite.html.

QGIS also supports editable views in SpatiaLite.

If you want to create a new SpatiaLite layer, please refer to section Creating a new SpatiaLite layer.

DB2 Spatial Layers¶

IBM DB2 for Linux, Unix and Windows (DB2 LUW), IBM DB2 for z/OS (mainframe) and IBM DashDB products allow users to store and analyse spatial data in relational table columns. The DB2 provider for QGIS supports the full range of visualization, analysis and manipulation of spatial data in these databases.

User documentation on these capabilities can be found at the DB2 z/OS KnowledgeCenter, DB2 LUW KnowledgeCenter and DB2 DashDB KnowledgeCenter.

For more information about working with the DB2 spatial capabilities, check out the DB2 Spatial Tutorial on IBM DeveloperWorks.

The DB2 provider currently only supports the Windows environment through the Windows ODBC driver.

The client running QGIS needs to have one of the following installed:

• DB2 LUW
• IBM Data Server Driver Package
• IBM Data Server Client

If you are accessing a DB2 LUW database on the same machine or using DB2 LUW as a client, the DB2 executables and supporting files need to be included in the Windows path. This can be done by creating a batch file like the following with the name db2.bat and including it in the directory %OSGEO4W_ROOT%/etc/ini.

@echo off
REM Point the following to where DB2 is installed
SET db2path=C:\Program Files (x86)\sqllib
REM This should usually be ok - modify if necessary
SET gskpath=C:\Program Files (x86)\ibm\gsk8
SET Path=%db2path%\BIN;%db2path%\FUNCTION;%gskpath%\lib64;%gskpath%\lib;%path%