Downloading and importing the data

As described in the previous section, the DISTAL application will make use of four separate sets of freely available geospatial data:

• The World Borders Dataset

• The high-resolution GSHHG shoreline database

• The GNIS Database of US place names

• The GEONet Names Server's list of non-US place names

Note

For more information on these sources of data, refer to Chapter 4, Sources of Geospatial Data.

Let's work through the process of downloading and importing each of these datasets in turn.

The World Borders Dataset

You downloaded a copy of this dataset earlier. Create a subdirectory named data within your DISTAL directory, and place a copy of the TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.3 directory into the data directory. Then, create a new Python program named import_world_borders.py within your DISTAL directory, and enter the following into it:

import os.path
import psycopg2
import osgeo.ogr

connection = psycopg2.connect(database="distal",
                              user="distal_user",...