Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS: A Workbook Approach to Learning GIS, 3rd Edition

Storage Paradigms for Areal Data

Now we turn to looking at the specifics of the different data structures used by ArcGIS. Representing “almost zero-dimensional objects” (e.g., parking meters) and “essentially one-dimensional objects” (e.g., narrow streams) is relatively simple. If an object is, for our practical purposes, just a point then a simple, single coordinate pair will suffice. If a feature can be represented by a sequence of line segments, then just a sequence of coordinate pairs does the job. Representing areas, however, is a much less straightforward problem.