What is geodata?

Geodata is information about geographic locations that is stored in a format that can be used with a geographic information system (GIS).

Geodata can be stored in a database, geodatabase, shapefile, coverage, raster image, or even a dbf table or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The following is a list of geodata that can be used with Esri GIS software along with links to topics describing them:

Database

Databases and ArcGIS

Geodatabase

What is a geodatabase?

Raster image

What is raster data?

Tabular data such as dbf tables and Excel spreadsheets

Tabular data sources

Shapefile

What is a shapefile?

Coverage

What is a coverage?
3/14/2014