Micro World Data Bank (MWDB2) System

The Micro World Data Bank project is a combination of cartographic data and associated programs and Java code. The data includes these features: coastlines, islands, lakes, rivers, country boundaries, and state and province boundaries. This data is coded into five levels of detail so map generation need use only as much detail as desired.

The associated formatter program allows the user to select any combination of features any one of the five levels of detail. The program also allow the user to select to have the desired data output in either big endian or little endian binary formats so the data can be used on both Intel and non-Intel computers. The program will also output the data in standard ASCII so that it can be readily viewed and studied. Finally, the program will also build an indexed version of the data. This both reduces the size of the data files and makes data retrieval considerably faster when working with less than the full surface of the earth.

Full program code is provided for the formatter program and input/output libraries which are used by the formatter program. The input/output libraries encapsulate and illustrate the use of the high speed channels which were made available in the Java NIO (New I/O) package. The libraries also demonstrate how to work with both big and little endian data.

A user manual is provided for the formatter program and a traditional  programmer's manual is provided for the I/O libraries. An additional manual fully describes the Micro World Data Bank cartographic data.  All of these manual are provided in both Word doc and Adobe .PDF  formats. These manuals are not tied to the Java programming language.

For Java programmers a full set of JavaDocs are provided.  Separate versions of the formatter program are provided for Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Mac as well as an executable .jar file.

This package is a small part of an effort to explore and describe how computers can be used to make maps. For additional information on the complete project visit: http://computer-maps.sourceforge.net

Visit the author's page at: http://fredposp.users.sourceforge.net

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.  For more information, please refer to <http://unlicense.org/>

Fred Pospeschil