Week 2 Lab: Attribute Data Manipulation

Due Oct 15 before class.

In this exercise you will learn how to update, query, and manipulate attribute data in ArcGIS. Finish all tasks in Chapters 8 and 10 in Chang and Exercises 3 and 4 in Chapter 4 of ESRI Geodatabase Workbook. You can find a pdf copy of ESRI Geodatabase Workbook in I:\Students\Data\GIS\ArcGIS Documentation\ArcGIS9.1_documentation\ ESRI_Library\Managing_data_with_ArcGIS. The file name is GeodatabaseWorkbook.pdf. Lab exercise data are available in: I:\Students\Instructors\Geoffrey_Duh\GEOG4575\Chang_5e\chap8 and chap10 (or on the textbook CD) and in I:\Students\Instructors\Geoffrey_Duh\BuildingaGeodatabase. Please copy all these folders to your working directory in C:\Users before you start.

Answer and submit all questions listed at the end of this exercise. You DON’T need to submit answers to the questions listed at the end of the tasks in the textbook. Detail information of Geodatabase subtypes, attribute domains, and relationship classes can be found in today’s readings.

Questions

1) Explain how you would determine the key fields for a Relate if you needed to relate several tables.

2) What’s the difference between a Join, a Relate, and defining a relationship class? When is one more appropriate than the others?

3) Chapter 8, Tasks 4, 5 and 6 all give methods to create new attribute data. Summarize each method and comment on when you might prefer that method.

4) Chapter 10, Task 4: What kind of willow is found in areas of frequent or occasional flooding?

5) Make up a problem for which the Raster Data Query operations in Chapter 10, Task 6 would be useful.

6) Explain what a split policy is and what are the options it has in ArcGIS.