what do i do with this .sql file?

[MelissaAlexander1]

I'm hoping someone can give me some advice about how to handle a dataset I've discovered for a project I am working on.

There is a group out of the University of Nebraska working on digitizing historic railroad maps, and they've made this data available to the public here: http://auroraproject.unl.edu/web/data/rail.xhtml

After downloading, I found the data is in .sql format. I'm pretty comfortable with ArcMap, but have no familiarity with PostGIS or any similar programs.

Can someone give me some advice about how to get this data into ArcMap? Thanks so much in advance.

[curtvprice · Accepted solution]

This doesn't look easy - it most likely requires installing MySQL, loading your file, and connecting to it using ODBC

Re: Connect ArcGIS Desktop to MySQL Database​

But hey, this may be a alternate path, via SqlLite

SQLite and ArcGIS—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

sqlite - script to convert mysql dump sql file into format that can be imported into sqlite3 db - St...

I would seriously consider emailing these folks to ask if they can provide the data to you in another format. You never know...

[MelissaAlexander1]

I just got it working! I emailed the UNL folks as you suggested, and while they were prompt in replying, they weren't willing to share the data in any other formats.

I ended up using MySQL and Navicat to load and host the data, then used QGIS to read the database through a local host. ArcMap didnt want anything to do with the MySQL database, though that may have been my fault for not knowing very much about MySQL.

Thanks for your help!