Technical notes about Census 2000 Summary File 3 Access template


July 25, 2002 

Data item HCT033E003 was missing from Segment 71 in previous versions of the file 
structures. All structures have been updated to include this field.

August 07, 2002

The Access structure has been redone to include import specifications. The import 
specifications were missing from the previous version on-line.  The latest version 
was created in Microsoft Access 2000.  Attempts to save a copy of the updated file 
in Access 97 format with the import specifications have so far proven unsuccessful.

August 08, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for the geographic file 
and the data files containing fields with decimals.  The import specification for 
the geographic file has been changed from delimited to fixed length.  Correct field 
start positions and lengths are now included. Data files containing fields with 
decimals are 01, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 72 and 76.

A technical note: Make sure that "First Row Contains Field Names" is not checked 
during the import process.  Otherwise, the first record in the data file will not be
imported.

August 09, 2002

The Table "Tables" appears in incorrect order.  This was corrected by changing the field 
type of the field LineNumber from Text to the Numeric type Integer and doing an ascending 
sort on this column within Table Design.  

August 20, 2002

The import specifications and tables for data files 06 and 07 have been updated. Field types
have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded by
some values in the data files. 

August 28, 2002

The code page parameter of the geographic file import specification was changed from Unicode
to US-ASCII in response to some reports of the INTPTLAT and INTPTLON fields coming in
incorrectly.

September 4, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for data files 07 and 15. Field 
types have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded 
by some values in the data files. The import specification for data file 07 was updated on
August 20, 2002, however, this correction was not complete for those importing data file 07 
for large states.

September 5, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for data files 15, 16 and 60. Field 
types have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded 
by some values in the data files. 

September 9, 2002

The latest version contains updated import specifications for data files 59, 60, 61 and 62.
Field types have been changed from "Long Integer" to "Double" for fields whose lengths were exceeded by some values in the data files. Also, "First Row Contains Field Names" was 
unchecked in the import specifications for files 59 and 62.

September 12, 2002

The field lengths for the first five fields in the import specification and table for each 
data file are incorrect.  These fields are all text fields whose field lengths are listed 
as 255 characters. This makes the Access 2000 database larger than it should be. The correct lengths appear below. 

FILEID                6
STUSAB                2
CHARITER              3     
CIFSN                 2
LOGRECNO              7

We are investigating the best way to correct this in the Access 2000 template. It may be necessary to compact the database after re-sizing one or two of these fields at a time to get
around the "too many fields defined" error message. It is a good idea to do this before 
importing any data.

The table SF3GEO Dictionary was resorted by changing the field types for SIZE and OFFSET from
Text to Numeric Long Integer and sorting OFFSET in ascending order.

September 16, 2002

The field lengths of FILEID, STUSAB, CHARITER, CIFSN, LOGRECNO have been adjusted for all 
tables except 06, 59 and 61.  The import specifications have not yet been corrected.  


Technical notes about other formats at http://www.census.gov/support/2000/SF3/


Access 1997

September 10, 2002

The original Census 2000 Summary File 3 template was created in Microsoft Access 2000. An 
Access 97 version of the template will be placed back on-line shortly. This template will 
not contain any import specifications. These are lost when exporting from Access 2000 to a 
prior version.  Users will need to create their own import specification for the geographic 
file (because it is a fixed length text file that is not delimited) or import it from the 
Summary File 1 Access 97 template. 


dBase 5

The dBase 5 version of the Census 2000 Summary File 3 structures have incorrect field lengths.
All text fields are 255 characters and all numeric fields are 20 characters with five decimal
places. This causes these files to take up much more disk space than they otherwise would.
This problem is related to the increased difficulty of going from FoxPro, the original file format, to Access 2000, as opposed to Access 97, to dBase 5.  There are no plans to update
this version of the structures. They are provided on an as-is basis.