Supported Source Files

Spectrum Spatial Analyst supports uploading the following file types:

  • MapInfo TAB files (Native or Native X): Only vector spatial tab files are supported (not raster), and the data file must be a Mapinfo DAT file. The minimum files needed are MAP, DAT, ID, and TAB. TAB files that reference other data formats besides DAT, such as CSV, Access, or Excel tables, are not supported.
  • ESRI Shapefiles: The minimum files needed are SHP DBF and SHX. PRJ and CPG files can be chosen if they exist.
  • CSV files: We support CSV files in UTF-8 and ANSI (non-ANSI or non-UTF-8 characters in these files may fail).
    • Spectrum Spatial Analyst supports and autodetects four CSV delimiters: comma, semi-colon, pipe, and tab.
    • The user can specify the decimal separator as a decimal point or comma.
    • Enclose text in double quotes (single quotes are not supported). Text without quotes will, in most cases, be interpreted as text and converted to a string column type.
  • Excel files: Only Excel Workbook (*.xlsx) and Excel 97-2003 Workbook (*.xls) are supported. Previous XLS versions and Strict Open XML Spreadsheet (*.xlsx) are not supported. Other extensions, such as .xlsm, are unsupported. XLS files have a limit of 65,536 rows compared to XLSX, which can have 1,048.576 rows.
  • GeoJSON files: Spectrum Spatial Analyst does not let users directly upload this file type. However, they can open this and other file types as a vector layer (GeoJSON, KML, CSV, or Excel) and then save it to the server. Spectrum Spatial Analyst always converts these layers to GeoJSON for display on the map (and when saving, the layer is uploaded as a GeoJSON source).

When uploading data from CSV and Excel files, users can choose to:

  • Specify an XY column and spatial reference system
  • Geocode the data before upload in Spectrum Spatial Analyst (if it has an address column and the Spectrum Spatial Analyst project is using a supported service such as the precisely geocode API or a local Global Geocoder module)
  • Upload the table as non-spatial to create a non-spatial table. This option is only available if the destination data source (see below) is SQL Server or PostGIS. To display data on the map after uploading it, an administrator would need to join the table to a spatial table by creating a named view in Spectrum Spatial Manager or by creating a view in SQL server or PostGIS and making that available as a new named table in Spectrum Spatial Manager.