# ESRI Personal GeoDatabase

OGR optionally supports reading ESRI Personal GeoDatabase .mdb files via ODBC. Personal GeoDatabase is a Microsoft Access database with a set of tables defined by ESRI for holding geodatabase metadata, and with geometry for features held in a BLOB column in a custom format (essentially Shapefile geometry fragments). This drivers accesses the personal geodatabase via ODBC but does not depend on any ESRI middleware.

Personal Geodatabases are accessed by passing the filename of the .mdb file to be accessed as the datasource name. No ODBC DSN is required.

OGR treats all feature tables as layers. Most geometry types should be supported, including 3D data. Measures information will be discarded. Coordinate system information should be properly associated with layers.

Currently the OGR Personal Geodatabase driver does not take advantage of spatial indexes for fast spatial queries, though that may be added in the future.