Book Image

QGIS 2 Cookbook

By : Mandel, Olaya Ferrero, Anita Graser
Book Image

QGIS 2 Cookbook

By: Mandel, Olaya Ferrero, Anita Graser

Overview of this book

QGIS is a user-friendly, cross-platform desktop geographic information system used to make maps and analyze spatial data. QGIS allows users to understand, question, interpret, and visualize spatial data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps. This book is a collection of simple to advanced techniques that are needed in everyday geospatial work, and shows how to accomplish them with QGIS. You will begin by understanding the different types of data management techniques, as well as how data exploration works. You will then learn how to perform classic vector and raster analysis with QGIS, apart from creating time-based visualizations. Finally, you will learn how to create interactive and visually appealing maps with custom cartography. By the end of this book, you will have all the necessary knowledge to handle spatial data management, exploration, and visualization tasks in QGIS.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
13
Index

Opening File Geodatabases with the OpenFileGDB driver

File Geodatabases (GDB) are a relatively new format compared to shapefiles, and they were created by Esri for their Arc product line. They allow the storage of multiple vector and raster layers in a single database. Some government agencies release data officially in this format. However, only in the last few years has it been possible to open this data with open source tools.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you will need a File Geodatabase, naturalearthsample.gdb.zip, which is included in the sample data, and GDAL 1.11 or a newer version.

Tip

Check your GDAL version by navigating to Help | About | About. If your GDAL is a lower number, upgrading your QGIS should get you a new enough version. Refer to http://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html for more options, especially if on Linux where you may need third-party repositories for a newer version of GDAL.

File Geodatabases are actually folders full of all sorts of binary files. Typically...