Key Terms

Attribute: characteristics about a theme that are contained in a table. Every theme has an attribute table.
Feature: One or more features make up a theme: Points, lines, and polygons.
Line: A feature appears as a line segment or a series of connected line segments. They are useful for representing features like roads or rivers.
Point: A feature is recorded as a single x,y coordinate. They are useful for representing cities, wells, sample points.
Polygon: A feature that appears as an enclosed shape. They are useful for representing features like lakes.
Query: When you select a portion of a theme based on an attribute in the table you are making a query. You are asking a question about the spatial data.
Shapefile: A file storage unit that ArcView uses.
Table of Contents/Legend: A list of themes contained in the View and located on the left side of the View window.
Table: Table containing attributes for the theme that can be displayed, queried, and edited. The table contains records (rows) that represent individual features. There are also fields (columns) that contain attributes (characteristics) about each record.
Theme: The type of data you are looking at. For example, cities, roads, or countries. Each theme will be either a point, line, or polygon shape.
View: Used to display and query spatial data and usually contains multiple themes.

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