Types of geospatial data

In the previous chapter, we looked briefly at some of the more common formats used to store and transfer raster and vector geospatial data. Let's now look at some of the more important types of geospatial data you are likely to encounter.

Shapefiles

As we saw in the previous chapter, a shapefile is a collection of files on disk, which together hold a set of geospatial features along with their attributes and geometries. For example, the following illustration shows the data stored in a typical shapefile:

Because the shapefile format has been around for many years, and dates back to the dBase days, a single shapefile is made up of several individual files. Typically, these files are combined into a ZIP archive for distribution.

Shapefiles are hugely popular because they make it so easy to store and distribute geospatial data. Practically every GIS system and library that works with geospatial data is able to understand the shapefile format.

Shapefiles, however, do have...