Working with Vector Data - Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools - page 45

Figure 3.14: Viewing birds by name

Now that we have a good idea of how to load and render vector layers
to tell a story, let's look under the hood and see what we can do with
the attributes associated with our GIS data.

3.5 Making Attribute Data Work for You

So far, we haven't really dealt much with the attributes associated with
our data layers, other than using them with the various renderers. In
this section, we'll get into working with our attribute data and making
it work for us. We will leave Harrison's birds alone to roost for a while
and use the cities layer in the sample dataset to identify features, view
the attribute table, select features, and attach actions to attributes. We
will be using QGIS to illustrate how to work with attribute data, but
you will likely find similar capabilities in the other applications we've
mentioned so far.