Load and unload shapefile data

Use the infoshp, loadshp, and unloadshp utilities for working with spatial data contained in ESRI shapefiles.

The executable files for the utilities are located in the $INFORMIXDIR/extend/spatial.version/bin directory:
  • The infoshp utility is useful for gathering information from ESRI shapefiles when you are preparing to load the shapefiles into a database.
  • The loadshp utility loads spatial data from an ESRI shapefile into the database.
  • The unloadshp utility copies data from the database to an ESRI shapefile.
You can leave them in this directory, or you can copy them to $INFORMIXDIR/bin. If you leave them here, you may want to add $INFORMIXDIR/extend/spatial.version/bin to your $PATH environment variable. If you copy the files to $INFORMIXDIR/bin, you may not need to change your $PATH environment variable, if $INFORMIXDIR/bin is already included in the variable definition.
Important: The loadshp utility does not add information to ESRI system tables, such as the layers table. Therefore, data loaded with the loadshp utility is not accessible to ArcSDE and other ESRI client tools. Use the ESRI shp2sde command to load data if you want to access it using ESRI client tools. Data loaded using the loadshp utility is accessible to client programs that do not depend on ESRI system tables other than the OGC-standard geometry_columns and spatial_references tables.