Non-geo data in GIS

[James]

Hello,

We'd like to make use of geospatial analysis for a data set that has
distance structure in it but is not geographic data. Are there any
known projects or tutorials for this type of work? Ideally I'd like to
convert our data (x,y coordinates with attributes) into some standard
form and be able to use exisitng geo tools directly. Does this sound
easy? Conceptually it looks easy, but somehow I think it won't be.

Any tips or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Jim

[dsl]

Most GISystems will allow you to convert a table of geographic
information into a spatial data format (shp, mif, etc). There are
some Open Source options that might help: Quantum GIS, OpenJump, to
name a few.

A lot of point pattern analysis end up just using the x,y info
anyway. I've seen some spatial analysis extensions for Excel. So
depending on what you are trying to do, you don't need to convert your
data into a spatial data format.

What are you trying to do?

David