Working with Vector Data - Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools - page 34

Then, open a command shell on your system and do the following:

$ ogrinfo -so -al world_borders.shp
INFO: Open of `world_borders.shp'
using driver `ESRI Shapefile' successful.

Layer name: world_borders
Geometry: Polygon
Feature Count: 3784
Extent: (-180.000000, -90.000000) - (180.000000, 83.623596)
Layer SRS WKT:
GEOGCS["WGS 84",
DATUM["WGS_1984",
SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.257223563,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","7030"]],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","6326"]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],
UNIT["degree",0.01745329251994328,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122"]],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","4326"]]
CAT: Real (16.0)
FIPS_CNTRY: String (80.0)
CNTRY_NAME: String (80.0)
AREA: Real (15.2)
POP_CNTRY: Real (15.2)

Near the end of the output you'll find the fields included in the dataset.
Note that POP_CNTRY is listed last, and the output indicates that it is a
numeric field.

Of course, all the desktop GIS applications provide a way to not only
determine which fields are in a dataset but actually view the data itself.
In uDig we just click the Table View tab below the map view, and we get
a nicely formatted view of the data, as shown in Figure 3.5 , on the next
page. We'll examine working with data in other applications in a bit.

Viewing the attribute table is good for just browsing around. Let's look
at some more advanced ways to view and render our data.

3.4 Advanced Viewing and Rendering

Harrison has some more bird-sighting data he collected in his trav-
els. He wants to view the sightings in a number of ways, including by
species and number of birds per site. This will allow him to quickly
identify where he saw individual species and large groups of the same
species. Fortunately, there are some advanced rendering techniques
that can help him out.