What is a Shapefile
- A geospatial vector data format.
- Developed and regulated by Esri as a mostly open specification.
- First introduced in the early 1990s.
- It consists of a series of files with the same name stored in the same directory.
- Unlike a Word document, which is a single file per document.
Shapefile Structure
- It has three mandatory files:
.shp: Shape format, contains the feature geometry..shx: Shape index format, a positional index of the feature geometry allowing quick seeking..dbf: Attribute format, contains columnar attributes for each shape, in dBase IV format.
Shapefile Structure
- Other optional files:
.prj: Projection description
- Although optional, a shapefile without a projection file cannot be displayed correctly in GIS software.
- You will work with a shapefile without a projection file in assignment 3.
.sbn, .sbx, …
Modern Alternatives
GeoPackage:
- Uses the
.gpkg extension.
- An open, non-proprietary, platform-independent, and standards-based data format for GIS.
- Based on SQLite.
- Can hold multiple vector and raster data layers in a single file.
- Initially released in 2014.
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