Attribute Data

Question 1

What are the 2 common vector file formats?

Answer 1

ArcGIS Geodatabase and Shapefiles.

Question 2

What is an ArcGIS Geodatabase?

Answer 2

A silo of different point, line, and/or polygon feature classes, associated attribute data, and raster data sheets.

Question 3

What is a shape file?

Answer 3

A loosely-proprietary ArcGIS (ESRI) data format for storing georefrencing data, geometry, and attributes.

Question 4

What does the anatomy of attributes in GIS include?

Answer 4

Data stored in tables by fields and records, all records have the same fields, and every field has a data type.

Question 5

What is a character?

Answer 5

Text or #’s formatted as text (strings)

Question 6

What is an integer?

Answer 6

A # stored without decimals (shot +/- 32700, long +/- 2140000000)

Question 7

What is a Floating Point?

Answer 7

w decimals (single precision 10^78, double precision 10^208)

Question 8

What is a BLOB?

Answer 8

A binary large object (media attachments)

Question 9

What di feature attribute tables store and access?

Answer 9

Spatial information (ie. feature geometry)

Question 10

What kind of data do non-spatial attribute tables store?

Answer 10

Data with no explicit spatial component (though can be linked to spatial data through feature attribute table)

Question 11

What are flat files?

Answer 11

All data collected in one large file.

Question 12

What are the issues with flat files?

Answer 12

Data redundancy and data consistency.

Question 13

What are keys?

Answer 13

Data stored in flat files that are associated by shared attributes.

Question 14

What is a primary key

Answer 14

It is one or more attribute in a table whose value can uniquely identify a record.

Question 15

What is a foreign key?

Answer 15

Data from a different table that can join multiple tables.

Question 16

What are cardinalities?

Answer 16

Joined tables in relational databases that have four possible relationships (1:1, 1: many, many:1, m:m)

Question 17

What is an outer join?

Answer 17

The default to “keep all records”

Question 18

What is an inner join?

Answer 18

The option to “keep only matching records”

Question 19

What is structured query language?

Answer 19

A standard database protocol adopted by most ‘relational’ databases.

Question 20

What is a query?

Answer 20

A question posed to the database in the form of a SELECT statement.

Question 21

What are the inputs that can be modified by functions?

Answer 21

Select (.* [records]), from (.MPs [a table]), and where (“party”)

Question 22

What are spatial joins?

Answer 22

A way to match records from a join layer to coincident features in a target layer

Question 23

What is the key characteristic of spatial joins?

Answer 23

No change in output layer geometry.