• What is GIS?
• 3 components (computer system, spatially referenced data, people)
• Spatially reference data or geographic data (geospatial data, attribute data, metadata)
• Geospatial data:
o Characteristics of spatial data (mappable, discrete or continuous, spatial relationships)
o GIS is a simplified view of the real world (discrete or continuous), problems still exist (dynamic and static, identification of discrete or continuous features, scale, fuzzy)
o Topology (adjacency, containment or coincidence, connectivity) and how it works
o Raster, vector, and geodatabase data models
o GIS data or file formats (vector: shapefiles, coverages, TIN; raster: grid and image; Geodatabase (object-oriented data model): vector — feature class, feature datasets, nonspatial table, topology, relationship classes, geometric networks), raster — raster datasets, raster catalogs)
• Attribute data:
o row, column, relational database,
o one-one, many-one, one-many, many-many; join and relate
• Metadata
• Geodatabase (personal and multi-user)