Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Working with object tables and relations
A question was raised during the Bestaurants workshop review: what if I want to write
multiple reviews for a given restaurant or diner? Does the geodatabase support that? The
answer is no. We have a single review field for each feature. We can add another field
called
REVIEW2
, for instance, but it is infeasible as we will end up with a very rigid
geodatabase design. It is not an elegant solution to the multiple reviews problem. It seems
that we can't work out a solution for this with the skills we have acquired so far while
working with feature classes. We need a new tool that can help us tackle this. Here is where
object tables come into the picture.
Note
An object table is a table in the geodatabase that stores only the records without geometry.
Tables are extremely useful, and yes, we can create them in the geodatabase too! However,
how can we use tables to solve the multiple reviews problem? For each restaurant, diner,
and so on, there might be multiple reviews; so, one feature can have many reviews. Let's
start with
Diners
; for this, we need to create the
DINERS_REVIEWS
table. To create the
table, perform the following steps:
1. Open
ArcCatalog
and browse to your
Bestaurants
geodatabase.
2. Right-click on the empty area on the right, point the cursor to
New
, and then select
Table
, as shown in the following screenshot:
