How can I use the .dbf files that came with my shape file data through OpenMap?
The .dbf file holds attributes for the graphical objects stored in the shapefile (.shp). There are a couple of ways you can go to take advantage of the information in that file. You can load the file into the database, and then perform queries into the database from within the Layer, and then associate the attributes to the OpenMap grpahical objects created from the shapefile. You can also convert the .dbf file to a csv file, and then do the same thing. The com.bbn.openmap.layer.shape.areas package uses the csv file provides the capability to associate some drawing attributes to objects within a shapefile. We do not provide a generic database solution for this problem, because it is our experience that there isn’t one. We’ve always had to come up with specialized code to display the graphics and attributes in a manner that was appropriate for the particular goal of the layer.
