Introduction

Real-world objects can be represented in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) using geographic data. In the context of the Esri ArcGIS technology, a database that stores geographic data is a geodatabase. The geodatabase is a native ArcGIS format that allows you to store, edit, and manage spatial data and non-spatial data. Before you start adding data to a geodatabase, it is important to think about how your data will be organized in the geodatabase. Another important step is to create an empty but structured schema of your geodatabase (data model). Paul A. Longley (Geographical Information Systems and Science, 2nd Edition, 2005, John Wiley & Sons, Inc , p.178) has mentioned three steps in creating a geospatial data model:

In this chapter, you will skip steps 1 and 2, and you will manually create the physical schema or the geodatabase structure.

In this chapter, you will work with the most common geodatabase elements, such as feature dataset, feature class, table, and relationship class. You will test the main advantages of using a geodatabase by performing the following actions: