On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 12:07:23PM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I'm about to re-arrange the spatial data on my file server and rather > than make arbitary decisions about placement, I wanted to adhere to any > internationally-accepted standards on categories of spatial data. > > Under a directory \GISDATA I wanted to place various sub-directories, in > order to divide up the spatial data in a meaningful way. > > What should these sub-directories be? > Is there a metadata standard that divides spatial data into meaningful > cateogories?
There is no standard for this because there are more than one way to organize spatial data. A typical scheme would be to develop a hierarchy based on location: continent/nation/state/county/city, or whatever politcal divisiions work for each area. Then again, you may want to subdivide data by vendor and/or format (TAB vs Shape, etc.) or resolution. Sometimes you'll have to consider temporal or thematic dimensions. You might also have disk space or user access issues so you may have to manage a library across several physical disk drives. Then there's special problems that confound spatial hierarchies. For example, how do you handle a theme like aerial imagery that has no physical or logical boundary? Or what about themes that have overlapping boundaries (like data organized by quad sheets which doesn't neatly line up with county boundaries?) Then there's data developed for special projects that may have completely arbitrary boundaries, temporal and user access issues, vendor and format variations and often unique or synthesized themes. It would be great if Windows or MapInfo at least could provide something like Unix's symbolic link. With this we could create multiple organziations schemes and not need to worry about the physical storage. Window's "shortcut" file type is the right idea, but they didn't take it far enough. You can open a MapInfo TAB file by double-clicking on a shortcut --and that's handy-- but you can't use a shortcut in a workspace, which really is a limitation. - Bill Thoen _______________________________________________ MapInfo-L mailing list [email protected] http://www.directionsmag.com/mailman/listinfo/mapinfo-l
