Product supply

Available formats

The OS ESG is available in two formats:

• GeoPackage – Full Supply only

• Comma-separated values (CSV) – Full Supply and Change-Only Updates (COU)

It is not available in Geography Markup Language (GML) format.

GeoPackage overview

GeoPackage is an open standard data format as defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). GeoPackage is designed to be a lightweight format that can contain large amounts of varied and complex data in a single, easy-to-distribute and ready-to-use file.

Please be advised that older versions of GIS software may need updating before being able to display and interact with GeoPackage files.

GeoPackage offers users the following benefits:

• The single file is easy to transfer and offers the end-user a rich experience.

• Attribute names are not limited in length, making it user-friendly.

• The file size limit is very large at 140TB, so lots of data can be easily accommodated (please note that a file size limit may be imposed by the file system to which the file is written).

• It supports raster, vector and database formats, making it a highly versatile solution.

• It is an OGC standard.

• In most cases, it is a plug and play format.

For information on how to open, use and understand a GeoPackage dataset, please refer to our ‘Getting Started with GeoPackage’ guide. Further detailed information on GeoPackage can be taken from the GeoPackage website.

CSV overview

CSV files are a delimited text file that uses commas or other characters to separate individual elements of a feature. It is used to store data, often in the form of a table. These tables can be freely loaded into databases and programs, allowing for the easy loading and updating of data holdings.

In the CSV supply of OS ESG:

• There is one record per line in each file.

• Fields are separated by commas.

• String fields are delimited by double quotes.

• No comma is placed at the end of each row in the file.

• Records are terminated by Carriage Return / Line Feed.

• Double quotes inside strings are escaped by doubling.

• COUs are available in this format.

Where a field has no value in a record, two commas are placed together in the record (one for the end of the previous field and one for the end of the null field). Where the null field is a text field, double quotes are included between the two commas, for example -, “”,

The CSV data is transferred using Unicode encoded in UTF-8. Unicode includes all the characters in ISO-8859-14 (Welsh characters).

The transfer is normally in a single file, but the data can be split into multiple files using volume numbers. The OS ESG records are provided within continuous files cut at approximately 1  million lines, as referred to above.

This means different record types (for example, BLPUs and LPIs) can be found in the same CSV file.

CSV header files

The CSV header files are available to download from the OS ESG Downloads page.

Supply mechanism

The OS ESG product is supplied as an online download from the OS Data Hub. You can select a data format (GeoPackage or CSV) during the download process.

The product will be refreshed on a monthly basis.

The OS ESG references unique street reference numbers (USRNs) in AddressBase Premium; however, there is a disconnect in publication schedules between the two products, with the OS ESG publishing monthly and AddressBase Premium publishing every six weeks.

The following table shows the corresponding publication schedule alignments between the two products: