Ordnance Survey – Great Britain's national mapping agency
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3.1: The attributes of map features (2)
Attribute tables
Most GIS enable the user to view the data in tabular form without necessarily using map graphics at all. This is equivalent to using typical office spreadsheet software. Often you may know the name of an object but not necessarily where it is – hence you can use the table to find the object and then switch to the map to see where it is.
- Move your mouse over the table; notice how it also locates the object on the map.
- Move your mouse over the map; notice how it finds the object's attributes in the table.
The GIS forms a constant link between the attributes and the geographical properties of each of the features: you can get either one of these if you know something about the other. This is the basis of location-finding mapping services on the Internet: you can generate a map for any location because there is a data layer with a link between the postcode attribute and the geographical coordinates. You can see how this works on the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map™ pages, but please press the back button to continue with The GIS files.
GIS can be used to link to any piece of information that may exist about an object from other systems. As we will see in the next section.
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