Downloading a dataset

This section of the getting started guide takes you through the process of downloading and extracting your AddressBase Core supply.

Data supply

AddressBase Core is supplied in two optional offerings:

• As a Managed Great Britain Set (MGBS) which provides national Great Britain data in one of two formats: Comma Separated Values (CSV) and GeoPackage (GPKG).

• In 5km tiles in one of two formats: CSV and GPKG. CSVs are supplied as individual tiles where multiples are selected, whereas GPKG are only ever supplied as one file.

Backing up the data

We recommend that you copy your data supply to a backup medium, particularly if you take a COU supply to keep an archive of records. Please read Applying COU to tables > With archiving for more Information on how to do this.

Typical data volumes

For reading purposes, we recommend you store the data on a single hard disc. This speeds up your computer's ability to read the data.

Unzipped file sizes for a full supply of the product are as follows:

• CSV 8GB

• GPKG 12GB

Unzipped file sizes of the COU will vary upon each release as this will be dependent on the number of changes or records within a given tile.

Downloading instructions

PSGA customers can download full supply and COU of AddressBase Core via our download service.

1. In the OS Data Hub click Download data, you will be required to enter a password to access the PSGA members’ area. On successful entry to the download service, you will be able to view all your orders in the members’ area and download your data.

2. If you have ordered your data from our online portal, you will be sent an email with a link to a download page.

3. Within the PSGA members’ area, you can order and download the data that you require by clicking on Order Data, which is found under the Map Data heading.

4. Once you have selected Order Data, you will be presented with the Order page. From here, you can manage all your orders, including those for AddressBase products.

5. When you have placed an order for a product, the data will become available as a zipped data file.

Unzipping the data

The CSV and GPKG data are supplied in a compressed form (zip). Some software can access these files directly, while others will require it to be unzipped.

To unzip the zipped data files (.zip extension), use an unzipping utility found on most PCs, for example, WinZip. Alternatively, open-source zipping/unzipping software can be downloaded from the Internet, for example, 7-Zip.

The first level zip folder will contain the following:

• Order Details.txt – a summary of the order including order type, format and information on files supplied.

• Zipped folder with the product inside – this will be named as follows: AddressBaseCore_{variant}_{order_date_YYYY-MM-DD}_{file_number_NNN}.{format}.zip

  • variant: FULL or COU

  • order_date: Date the order was received, for example, 2020-02-11

  • file_number: Three-digit zero padded file number, for example, 001

  • format: csv, gpkg

Example:

• AddressBaseCore_FULL_2020-01-30_001.gpkg.zip or

• AddressBaseCore_COU_2020-01-30_001.csv.zip

The product within the ZIP folder will use the same naming convention as above but without the .zip at the end.