I've got hundreds of shapefiles from various different GIS projects that I want to start consolidating into a single database platform, currently attempting this with Postgres / PostGIS.
Hardly any of the data is standardized – meaning that it's a lot of the same data types, but the particular attribute names / types don't match.
Where should I start tackling this? Should I develop a standard model to migrate each shapefile into first (e.g. Hydro_line, transport_line, Hydro_poly standards, etc)?
An alternative is to just import each shapefile into Postgres individually, so each shp becomes a table in the database, but I'm not sure about this in terms of performance and organization. Feels sort of like delaying the inevitable…
Any advice on dealing with this daunting task?
Best Answer
Have a look at Spatial ETL softwares (Extract - Transform - Load), they are dedicated to such tasks. The most known is FME from Safe, but some open source (partial) alternatives are now available, like SDI (Spatial Data Integrator) and GeoKettle.