Esri arcgis file formats
There can be other optional files as well that share the same name as the main file.
#Esri arcgis file formats software
Associated FilesĪ standalone shp file can not be used by software applications to make meaning of the data it contains. For example, a shapefile containing cities of Los Angeles can have city name and temperature as attributes which gives meaningful representation to the spatial data. Each vector feature can have attributes that actually define the purpose of that feature. These features in combination can represent almost any type of shapes like water wells, country boundaries, spatial points, rivers flow, lakes, etc.
Data RepresentationĪs mentioned, a shapefile format describes geospatial information of a data set as vector features. The format has been developed as open specifications in order to facilitate interoperability between ESRI and other software products. It represents Geospatial information in the form of vector data to be used by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications. SHP is the file extension for one of the primary file types used for representation of ESRI Shapefile.