FIRST: Prepare
- Read Chapter 12 - Geodatabase Design Guide - Modeling Our World
- Read An Overview of Geodatabase Design from the ESRI WebHelp
- Explore some existed ESRI Data Models (templates you could use or modify)
- Consider these design tips
- Explore these design steps
SECOND: Document your design - 'Design Guide'. Create some type of document (Word, Excel, Visio, FreeMind) to document your database design. Make sure to include:
- Purpose of the database: What functions do you want the database to perform. What analysis will you do with it? What kind of maps will you make?
- Included layers: What kinds of layers are required for your geodatabase to perform the functions and operations you wish?
- For each layer, include the geometry type (point, line, poly) if vector or the type of raster data.
- Include the attributes that might be necessary for your geodatabase feature classes.
- Give some examples of how you might validate the attributes through domains
- Give some examples of how you might better classify your data using subtypes
- List what feature classes my be organized either thematically or spatially in feature datasets
- What will be the projection/spatial reference of your feature classes?
- This information on modeling feature classes will be helpful to read.
- Other information: What other information (non-spatial) will need to included in your database?
- Conduct internet searches to find existing digital datasets to include in your geodatabase
- Describe data you may need to create
- Create a file based geodatabase
- Incorporate an data you have located into the geodatabase
- Keep them as simple feature classes for now but be thinking about how to build more functionality into geodatabase. That's next!
- Your geodatabase
- Your design guide
