[OSM-dev] {To Robin} Re: OSM Data Question from FireGirl

[Jason Reid]

Fire Girl wrote:
> Thank you Robin -- thanks for the information!  I am still new at 
> development but trying to get all the pieces of information together.  
> It is very interesting to digest and I appreciate your time so much!
>
> So, I looked at this.... and please correct me if I am wrong.....So, 
> if I am not misunderstanding... one can obtain the very large 
> planet.osm file, and if implemented correctly on a local Intranet 
> system like mine I have in mind, ... if I know the correct BBOX 
> coordinates, ... I could input them & run some kind of query and then 
> extract a data.osm ''sub-file'' for any Country, City or other 
> geography, ... based on such coordinates? :-) :-) ... and go from 
> there with the data.osm file into other applications?
>
> May I ask, if this logic of mine is correct, what sort of Windows or 
> Linux system is best suited for this exercise, to break down the 
> planet.osm file, and where to learn how to best setup a Database with 
> the many Gigabyte planet.osm file? :).... like what best software 
> titles to use... and further, to this end, where also to find BBOX 
> coordinates for most major places?  I mean, I can clearly see 
> published out there New Zealand is something like 
> [bbox=165.9,-47.9,179.0,-34.0], because someone has posted that 
> information.... but how do I get these coordinates for any arbitrary 
> locale without guessing or hunting them down? :) :)
>
> thank you so much for brain knowledge to help me advance mine
>
> Best wishes, FireGirl.
>

You can download polygon's describing geographic areas from 
http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/. Then if you use those and the osmosis 
program (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Osmosis) you can 
extract just the states you want.

The planet file (or extracted output from step above) can also be loaded 
into a Postgresql database using the osm2pgsql 
(http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/utils/export/osm2pgsql/) 
script and you can query against that. Note that last week's planet file 
was 77gb once uncompressed so it can take a long time to import into a 
database if your system isn't that speedy.

-Jason Reid