This is an ALPHA version of MB utilities in python. These utilities are written in Python to interact with multibeam bathymetry data and metadata used with MB-System by David W. Caress and Dale N. Chayes. Use of this program is only recommended at the present time for those very familiar with both MB-System and PostGIS. Please see security WARNING below!
Currently, the program mbnav2sql.py is the most functional.
This program is intended to add files from an MB datalist (which may
be recursive, containing other datalists) to a PostGIS database in
order to complement the capabilities of MB-System programs such as
mbdatalist. This allows the powerful spatial queries in PostGIS to
apply to multibeam navigation. For example, one might query to get a
list of files within 50 km of the coast of the island of Oahu. It
also allows browsing of navigation files with a GIS program that can
interact with a PostGIS database. I have tested with Qgis, which
works well (but can be slow for many large navigation files).
There is currently limited functionality, but testing has included added over 25,000 files to a PostGIS database. Please let me know if you find this program useful, if you find bugs or have suggestions.
The PostGIS database column structure is as follows (though still subject to change):
file_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
filename VARCHAR(100),
directory VARCHAR(200),
mbformat INT,
start_time TIMESTAMP,
end_time TIMESTAMP,
records INT,
cruise_id VARCHAR(30),
track GEOGRAPHY
the_geom GEOMETRYUse ”mbnav2sql.py -h” for help and command line options.
See the EXAMPLES file for some usage possibilities.
An example of reading metadata for entire cruises from a public
repository can be seen in the program mbcruisemeta.py.
Author: Kelsey Jordahl [email protected]
Time-stamp: <Thu May 12 11:42:31 EDT 2011>
Although some checking is done on input, PostgreSQL communication is currently not done in an entirely secure manner. DO NOT USE with a production database or with any important data unless you are SURE exactly what you are doing. For more information on the potential dangers of SQL injection attacks, please see http://xkcd.com/327.
- Improve security of SQL cursor commands
- Better error checking
- Filter egregiously bad navigation points. More thorough renavigation should be done with mbnavedit or other MB-System tools, but database could be used to find navigation that needs to be edited.
- Qgis 1.5 doesn’t recognize
GEOGRAPHYcolumns. Qgis 1.6, in my initial testing,sometimes fails to readGEOGRAPHYcolumns. Database structure more friendly for common tools would be good. Qgis 1.5 works well on the simplifiedGEOMETRYcolumns. - Represent actual data coverage (full swath) in addition to trackline
- Tools for accessing multibeam data in the database. Currently the only way to interact with the database is directly through SQL commands.
- Link cruiseid to metadata for each cruise, ideally with automatic retrieval of
metadata from archives such as MGDS, NGDC or Rolling Deck to Repository
(an example of a start for this can be seen in
mbcruisemeta.py) - and plenty more....
These programs are released under the Gnu Public License (version 3). They are free to use, imply no warantee whatsoever, and may be redistributed under the terms of the GPLv3. Please see the file COPYING or http://www.gnu.org/licenses for details.
- python2.7 (may work on previous 2.x versions, but untested)
- psycopg2 for calling postgreSQL from within Python
- MB-System (probably version 5.1 or greater)
- PostgreSQL installed and running
- PostGIS enabled
- (optional) PostGIS-enabled GIS program such as Qgis
README.org- This information file (formatted for org-mode and GitHub markup)
README.txt- ASCII version exported from
README.org COPYING- GPL v3 license
EXAMPLES- Usage examples
mb.py- Python module containing classes for MB data structures
mbnav2sql.py- Load MB
.fnvfiles from datalist and load into PostGIS database mbcruisemeta.py- Print some metadata about cruises in a PostGIS database