Structures for Storing Geographic Data - Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS - page 257

CHAPTER 4 STEP-BY-STEP

Structures for Storing
Geographic Data

Open your Fast Facts text or document file.

Open the Color Figures file, so you can see the illustrations in more detail.

The exercises in this chapter will acquaint you intimately with both the logical structure of Esri data sets
and the methods used for storing those data sets on disk. In the process, you will be introduced to a major
component of ArcGIS: ArcToolbox. You will also learn more about ArcCatalog and ArcMap. As before,
you should view almost every step as containing a nugget of information that you will find useful in
the future. Since the software is complex, it is a good idea to ask yourself at each step if the capability it
suggests is one you will be able to remember how to tap, or whether it belongs in your Fast Facts File.

In Exercise 4-1, you are introduced to ArcToolbox. ArcToolbox is available, through an icon on the
Standard toolbar, from both ArcCatalog and ArcMap. In the exercises that follow, you look at some trivial
Esri datasets, basically to see their underlying structure. Exercise 4-2 looks at point, line, and polygon
personal geodatabase feature classes. In each case you will see the minimum in terms of attribute names.
You will look at the geographics, then at the attribute tables. You will augment the attribute tables of some
of the datasets by adding the x- and y- coordinates of points, using ArcToolbox.

Exercise 4-1 (Warm-Up)

Meet ArcToolbox

1. Start ArcMap with a Blank Map. Bring up the Catalog tree by clicking on the Catalog icon on the
Standard toolbar. Verify that the folder Trivial_GIS_Datasets is in

___IGIS-Arc_ YourInitials

and that there is folder connection to it.