Assignment 4: Data Management and Query in ArcGIS
Due February 10, 2012
Introduction
This week’s lectures introduced you to the basic concepts employed to handle attribute data and
spatial-attribute data integration in geographic information systems. To paraphrase the text (Heywood
et al., 2011: 131), an understanding of these aspects of GIS is essential for being an intelligent user of
this powerful analytical tool. This understanding, however general it may seem, will help you to
formulate research questions that can be answered using GIS as well as to choose appropriate analytical
procedures and techniques for each project.
Theory section of this assignment will help you to review what you learned this week. The two practical
sections will give you an opportunity to learn more about and to practice the two basic data
management operations available in ArcGIS – querying data and joining attribute tables. Both of these
sections fall into the category of a guided tutorial.
Section 1: Theory
Textbook readings: Chapter 4 and lectures
Answers to these questions can be found in the textbook, in the guided tutorial, or online.
(each question is worth 2 marks)
1. What is the difference between a database and a database management system?
2. Describe the main characteristics of the relational database model.
3. How relationships between entities are modeled in a relational database?
4. Describe the main principles of the object-oriented database approach. What are its advantages
and disadvantage compared to the relational database model?
5. In ArcGIS, what is the difference between a shapefile and a geodatabase?
Section 2: Querying data
In this part of the assignment you will continue working on the Getting Started with GIS ESRI web course
you began working on in Assignment 1. You will learn more about types of data queries that can be
performed in ArcGIS and how to perform them. You will also learn some other useful data manipulation
techniques, such as sorting records in the attribute table and saving results of your query as a separate
dataset.
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Instructions
1. Go to: http://training.esri.com and select My Training from the left-hand menu.
2. Select My Virtual Campus Courses and then log in using the username and password you created
earlier.
3. Under Courses in Progress heading, click on the title of Getting Started with GIS course to get back
to this course.
4. In Module 3, complete the Query section.
5. If you have not done this before, save the data provided for this course on your H:\ drive.
6. When you finish examining results of the last query you need to perform in Step 5 of Query data
based on attributes exercise, do not Clear Selected Features. Instead:

in the Table of Contents, right-click on the name of the Florida cities layer and select Data
Export data option.

In the window that opens, leave all the default settings and make sure that you are
exporting the data to proper folder on your personal drive. Change the name of the file to
LargeCities and click OK.

When prompted, choose Yes and add the new dataset to the map document. Make sure
that the new layer is turned on.

Right click on the Florida Cities layer and choose Delete.

Change the symbol for LargeCities layer to something more presentable.

Create a map showing your work using LetterPotrait template on the Traditional Layouts
tab of the Select Template window.

Add your name to the layout and export your map.
7. Repeat the steps above after your complete Step 4 in Query based on location exercise.
Question 6
Submit a map showing result of attribute queries.
2 marks each
Question 7
Submit a map showing result of spatial queries.
Section 3: Performing a Join
In this part of the assignment, you will learn how to join a standalone table to the attribute table of
dataset. Datasets you will be working with are located in T:\Class\Geography\geog303\Assignment 4
folder. If you want to learn more about this operation, go to Help menu and select ArcGIS Desktop
Help. In the window that opens, click on Search tab and type in ‘join.’
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Instructions
1. If necessary, start ArcMap and add the data from the Assignment 3 folder to map document. This
folder contains the following files:
province.shp – a shapefile containing Saskatchewan provincial boundary
places.shp – a shapefile containing location and attributes of Saskatchewan communities.
200106skpop – an Excel file containing 2001 and 2006 population data for Saskatchewan
communities
Start with adding the province shapefile following by the rest of the data sets in this folder. You will
have transform places data sets to match the coordinate system of the province shapefile.
2. To make your map more appareling, change the coordinate system of the data frame to
NAD_1983_CORS96_UTM_Zone_13N. (Hint: look for this option in Predefined  Projected
Coordinate Systems  UTM).
3. Open attribute table of the places dataset and examine it. Note that it contains two fields with
community names, a sure sign that additional attributes were added to the original attribute table.
You will clean up the table’s appearance by hiding the fields that are redundant or not needed for
this exercise. To hide a field, click on the field’s name at the top of the Tables window to select it;
then right-click and choose Turn Field Off option. Hide PPN_CODE and PREC_CODE fields. Close the
attribute table.
4. In the Catalog Window, locate the 200106skpop.xlsx file. Click on the plus sign to expand its
contents. Select Sheet1 and drag it all the way to the Table of Contents. Note: since this is a
standalone table with no spatial data, ArcGIS cannot add it to the map display. For the same reason,
the Table of Contents window automatically switches to List by Sources tab to display this table.
5. Right-click on the table’s name, choose Open and examine its contents. The table contains 2001 and
2006 population data for Saskatchewan communities collected in corresponding censuses. Instead
of community names each community is identified by a unique code assigned by Statistics Canada to
municipalities or equivalent administrative units, like Indian reserves. In Statistics Canada
terminology these units are called census subdivisions, hence the unique code is abbreviated as
‘CSDIUD.’ The table also contains other records for bigger units of census geography, which contain
census subdivisions. More information on Standard Geographic Classification used by Statistics
Canada could be found here.
6. Open again the attribute table of the places layer and scroll through its fields. Do you see a field
containing the same unique identified you saw in the Excel file? Click on the name of this filed and
drag it all the way to the beginning of the table and drop it immediately to the right of Shape field.
In the next step you will use fields containing this unique identified to append the attribute table of
the places dataset with the data in the Excel file.
7. Right-click on the name of the places layer in the Table of Contents and choose Joins and Relates 
Join. In the window that opens, carefully read all the instructions on how to define parameters of
this operation – they follow very simple logic. Remember that your join is going to be based on the
CSD unique identifier. Find the corresponding field’s name in the first drop-down list. Since you do
not have that many datasets in this map document, ArcGIS has no problem suggesting the right
match for this field in the Excel file. (Note: make sure that Sheet1 is selected as the table you wish
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to join to the places attribute table.) Under Join Options select Keep only matching records. Click
OK.
8. Open the attribute table of the places layer and examine it. Three new fields with population data
(from the Excel file) have been added to it. Note that when you perform an attribute join, the data
is dynamically joined together. This means that the tables only ‘appear’ to be joined into one table.
If you need to make the join permanent, you will need to save the its results as a separate dataset.
9. In the Table of Contents, right-click on the places layer name and choose Data Export data.
Change the name of the new dataset to something more meaningful and click OK. When prompted,
add the new dataset to the map document. Delete the places file from the map document.
10. Now you are going to select the communities that in 2006 had population more than 5,000. To
avoid saving results of this query as yet another new dataset, your will make the rest of the
communities ‘disappear’ in the current dataset using a definition query. Double-click of the new
communities dataset to open the Properties window and click on the Definition Query tab. Click on
the Query button. In the window that opens enter the required expression and click OK. Click OK to
close the Properties window.
11. Change the communities layer symbol to something more suitable and examine your map. If
necessary zoom to the clusters of points. Open attribute table of this layer again and sort the
2006_POP field in Descending order. Examine the names of the communities that appear to have
the highest population values. What do you think has happened? Hint: compare the names in the
Name and CSD_Name fields. On what kind of relationship between the two tables the join you just
performed was based?
12. In the real world we often deal with datasets that are imperfect. To make a proper make of
Saskatchewan large cities, we would need to address the issues in our dataset. But since this is an
exercise that is supposed to focus on particular techniques (and it is quite long already), you will just
make a map showing ‘Saskatchewan communities with population more than 5,000.’ Use the same
template you used in the Section 2.
Question 8
Submit answers to the questions in Step 11 above
Question 9
Submit a map showing Saskatchewan communities with population more than 5,000
5 marks
2 marks
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