Tutorial 3-2: Populating geodatabase subtypes
Chapter 4 Extending data formats
Tutorial 4-1: Putting your data online
Tutorial 4-2: Creating 3D scenes
Chapter 5 Working with features
Tutorial 5-1: Creating new features
Tutorial 5-2: Using context menu creation tools
Tutorial 6-1: Exploring more creation tools
Tutorial 6-2: Building feature templates
Chapter 7 Working with topology
Tutorial 7-1: Working with map topology
Tutorial 7-2: Working with geodatabase topology
Introduction
The ArcGIS® platform uses the geodatabase as the spatial data format of choice for desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications. Within the geodatabase, you can store points, lines, polygons, tables, and other features for practically any application. As spatial data becomes more prolific across many platforms, the issue of maintaining the quality of both existing and newly created data has come to the forefront. Those in charge of managing these spatial datasets need the ability to control how they are created and edited to maintain this quality.
The geodatabase contains many parameters and options that the user can preset to help maintain data integrity in spatial datasets. Knowing what these components are and how to design them is crucial to building a new geodatabase, whether it is for local or enterprise use or even for use with online or mobile apps. And once these features are built into your data schema, it is important to know how to place your data into the geodatabase to take full advantage of these tools. Maintaining data integrity doesn’t stop with building and importing data; it extends into editing existing data and creating new data. The editing interface includes many tools that work with the geodatabase to enforce the rules of data integrity, so the proper use of these tools is critical to maintaining your data at the highest standards. It’s even possible to hide the nature of these data integrity rules so that they don’t interfere with the normal workflow, but they can be used to steer the user toward the proper data entry techniques. This book explores many of those tools, including default values, field domains, subtype categories, relationship rules, editing constraints and data entry control, custom feature templates, and more—all of which, when combined, will provide a solid editing experience designed to maintain your data integrity.
This book will take you through designing, building, and editing your datasets using all the latest features and enhancements. Each chapter discusses the major concepts and includes hands-on tutorials that take you step by step through various focused topics. The tutorials include a sample project file in which you can practice the skills outlined, datasets to work with, special Your Turn segments in which you can practice earlier concepts, a review with study questions for classroom use, and an independent exercise that you can work through to ensure you have mastered the concepts. Chapter topics include the careful design of a geodatabase schema, building geodatabases that include data integrity rules, populating your geodatabases with existing data, sharing the data on the web and building 3D views, creating new features, editing the data with various techniques, and working with topologies.
Data for the book’s tutorials is available in ArcGIS Online. For instructions on downloading it, see “Access the data” in chapter 1.
Instructor resources are available by request, at [email protected].
Chapter 1
Designing the geodatabase schema
One of the most important things you can start with in creating a geodatabase is a good design—and that design starts with a well-thought-out process about what data the geodatabase will house, how it will be edited, and how it will be maintained over time. Of course, a geodatabase will contain features classes, but whether to include a feature dataset, field names, domains, subtypes, and other functionalities should all be considered, and designed, before your fingers ever touch the keyboard. Case in point, this entire first chapter can be worked strictly with paper and pencil. These elements are all complex and cannot be created on the fly if you hope to achieve maximum success. Think about each of the components, examine what type of data will be used, imagine yourself or others having to edit this data, or even think about how you might use the data in a geoprocessing task. Perhaps you’ve used a poorly designed dataset before and spent a large amount of time formatting the data just to make it usable. If you can remember what problems arose and what steps you took to correct them, you will have a good understanding of how to create your datasets and avoid those mistakes.
It may also help to imagine what a final output map containing this data might look like so that you can determine what fields to use for labeling and symbolizing. The field types you design will make calculations either very easy or very difficult. Labeling will either be a snap or a headache. All these things can affect the design of a geodatabase, and a good design will make all future work that much easier.
Tutorial 1-1: Creating a geodatabase—building a logical model
The newest release of ArcGIS® Desktop software includes many additions and improvements to the data storage capabilities of the Esri® geodatabase file structure. There are new techniques to control interactions with the data, assign a behavior to it, and define relationships among datasets. In the design process, it is important to understand these techniques to build the most efficient database possible. It is even possible to build data controls to aid the user in creating data while decreasing the chance of introducing errors into the dataset. This book was tested using ArcGIS Pro 2.3.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
•Outline geodatabase behavior
•Integrate