Loading spatial data from shapefiles

Vertica provides the capability to load and parse spatial data that is stored in shapefiles. Shapefiles describe points, lines, and polygons. A shapefile is made up of three required files; all three files must be present and in the same directory to define the geometries:

• .shp—Contains the geometry data.

• .shx—Contains the positional index of the geometry.

• .dbf—Contains the attributes for each geometry.

To load spatial data from a shapefile:

1. Use STV_ShpCreateTable to generate a CREATE TABLE statement.

   => SELECT STV_ShpCreateTable ( USING PARAMETERS file = '/home/geo/temp/shp-files/spatial_data.shp')
                                  OVER() AS spatial_data;
              spatial_data
   ----------------------------------
    CREATE TABLE spatial_data(
      gid IDENTITY(64) PRIMARY KEY,
      uniq_id INT8,
      geom GEOMETRY(85)
   );
   (5 rows)
   

2. Create the table.

   => CREATE TABLE spatial_data(
      gid IDENTITY(64) PRIMARY KEY,
      uniq_id INT8,
      geom GEOMETRY(85));
   

3. Load the shapefile.

   => COPY spatial_data WITH SOURCE STV_ShpSource(file='/home/geo/temp/shp-files/spatial_data.shp')
       PARSER STV_ShpParser();
    Rows Loaded
   -------------
             10
   (1 row)
   

Supported shapefile shape types

The following table lists the shapefile shape types that Vertica supports.