May 2002
Beginner to intermediate
448 pages
13h 18m
English
Content preview from Geographic Information Systems: An Introduction, 3rd Edition
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13.3 Importing Existing Digital Data
Most GISs have characteristic storage formats, specially for the geometry. Thus, all GISs contain software that permits the import of existing digital data. The relevant processes entail transforming various exported formats to the GIS internal file format. Many GIS programs can have international standard formats such as ASCII, DIGEST, SIF, DXF, SHAPE, SIF, and HPGL for vector data, and TIFF, JPEG, and CGM for raster data. In addition, national GIS suppliers/agents have often developed programs to read special national formats. Most GISs can import attribute data from standard relational databases and from spreadsheets and word processing systems.
The ability to read different formats can often significantly enhance a program's user-friendliness, as most GIS users will find that they have to collect data from many different sources. Suppliers of GIS software have started to take this into account, and today it is possible to find solutions that are able to handle simultaneously many types of data warehouses with different formats. International GIS suppliers have now formed the Open GIS Consortium, with the aim of making systems less dependent on system-specific storage formats. In addition, in many countries standards are being developed for national exchange formats.
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