1. In Postgres, to export to a file..

cybersoftbjv1=# set client_encoding = gbk;
SET
cybersoftbjv1=# \o road.txt;
cybersoftbjv1=# select rd_id, cn_name from roads where cn_name <> '';
cybersoftbjv1=# \q


2. Open the file in vim, and do a “%s/ //g”. This would replace all ” ” to “”.
Note: This is reasonable for chinese since chinese dont have spaces. However english prases and sentences differ.

3. Open the file in mapinfo and replace the other columns using Table -> Update.

If anybody has any other way to specify the client encoding in ogr2ogr that would be perfect…

OGR2OGR
1. POSTGRES -> MAPINFO

$ ogr2ogr -f "Mapinfo File" busline_buffer10m.tab PG:"host=localhost user=postgres dbname=cybersoftbj" -sql "select * from table_name" -a_srs WGS84 -nln layer_name -nlt MULTIPOLYGON

2. MAPINFO -> POSTGRES

ogr2ogr -f "PostgreSQL" PG:"host=127.0.0.1 user=rupert dbname=australia password=*****" AUS_ROAD.TAB -nln AUS_ROAD -a_srs EPSG:4269 -t_srs EPSG:3857 -skip-failures
 
ogr2ogr -f "PostgreSQL" PG:"host=myhost user=myloginname dbname=mydbname password=mypassword" mytabfile.tab -nln newtablename -select columnName

Note: If you have Chinese characters, might as well do MAPINFO -> SHAPE -> POSTGRES
http://222.128.19.19/wordpress/?p=108

3. SHAPE -> POSTGRES

shp2pgsql -W "gbk" -s 4326 lbjrdnt_small_polyline roads > roads.sql

4. POSTGRES -> SHAPE

pgsql2shp -h 127.0.0.1 -u lbs -P tracking -f roads.shp databasename tablename

4. MAPINFO TO ORACLE

ogr2ogr -f OCI OCI:username/password@orcl C:\path_to_tabfile\EMPLOYEES.TAB -nln employees

Note: This assumes you already have Oracle 10g Client installed and “orcl” is defined as an instance in tnsnames.ora. OGR2OGR automatically updates USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA and creates a spatial index.

5. MAPINFO to MAPINFO but different projection. From EPSG:4326 to EPSG:3857

 ogr2ogr -f "MapInfo File" BaseMaps_3857/AUS_CITIES_3857.TAB BaseMaps/AUS_CITIES.TAB -a_srs "EPSG:4326" -t_srs "EPSG:3857"

Utilities include shp2pgsql which is found in “C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.2\bin\” or “/usr/local/pgsql/bin”. To load Mapinfo table, I have used the OGR utilities from FWTools for Windows. and used gdal1.3.2 (since it contains ogr) for Unix.

OGR2OGR CheatSheet should be a good kickstart for basic understanding. For the impatient..

ogr2ogr -f "PostGreSQL" -nlt LINESTRING -a_srs "EPSG:4326" PG:"host=localhost user=username password=mypassword dbname=mydb mytab.TAB -select columnName

or

ogr2ogr -f "PostgreSQL" PG:"host=myhost user=myloginname dbname=mydbname password=mypassword" mytabfile.tab -nln newtablename -select columnName

Bear in mind that you should select out the columns from your mapfile (mine is chinese) especially if you have a diffent encoding in your column which matches your database (postgres). You might get a “Terminating translation prematurely after failed translation of layer [layername]” error. Since Mapinfo stores the text to ASCII, my workaround is to export the tabfile to a UTF-8 textfile then upload it to PostGres. Hoping the primary ids would match to make the necessary updates…

An alternative to load Chinese text from Mapinfo to PostGIS is the ff:
1. In Mapinfo use the Universal Translator to export the table into a shape file.
2. Once you have the shape file, you can directly use the shp2pgsql.

shp2pgsql -W “gbk” -s 4326 lbjrdnt_small_polyline roads > roads.sql