GIS — page 6 of 6

GIS terms

501. Street Name Alias n alternative or abbreviated name for a street. Examples of this include MISS for Mississippi or MLK for Martin Luther King Jr.
502. string A series of alphanumeric characters of any length enclosed by quotes.
503. Structured Query Language (SQL) (SQL) A syntax for defining and manipulating data from a relational database. Developed by IBM in the 1970s, it has become an industry standard for query…
504. subclass Each asset class - stock, bonds, and cash equivalents, for example - is made up of a number of different groups of investments called subclasses.
505. Summary Metadata This is a shorter set of metadata to provide the basic information about a dataset.
506. Supply The availability of services or goods at centers. An example of a type of supply is the availability of milk at grocery stores, cars at a car dealer, or…
507. surface A geographic phenomenon represented as a set of continuous data, such as elevation or air temperature over an area.
508. surface data Information about variations in the surface of the Earth that are referenced to a known coordinate system and vertical datum.
509. surface model Digital abstraction or approximation of a surface. Because a surface contains an infinite number of points, some subset of points must be used to…
510. SYBASE A relational database management system to which ARC/INFO has access through the DATABASE INTEGRATOR.
511. symbol A graphic pattern used to represent a feature. For example, line symbols represent arc features; marker symbols, points; shades symbols, polygons; and…
512. symbol environment Defines the types of map symbols and their characteristics during a graphic display session in ARC/INFO.
513. system tables Tables which contain information about a database, such as the data dictionary and database transactions.
514. Systems network architecture (SNA) (SNA) Networking protocol popular in IBM environments.
515. table A set of data elements that has a horizontal dimension (rows) and a vertical dimension (columns) in a relational database system.
516. Tabular Data Descriptive data stored in rows and columns in a database that can be linked to spatial data.
517. Tagged interchange (image) file format (TIFF) An industry-standard raster data format. TIFF supports black-and-white, gray-scale, pseudocolor, and true-color images, all of which can be stored in a…
518. Tax Lot A unit of land assigned by the real property tax administration that usually resides within a square. Often referred to as A&T lots or simply tax lots.
519. Template a standard shape that the race car must comply to be within the NASCAR rules. The template closely resembles the shape of the factory car.
520. Terabyte (TB) (TB) A terabyte is a measure of computer data storage capacity and is one thousand billion (1,000,000,000,000) bytes.
521. terminal A device, usually a display monitor and a keyboard, used to communicate with the computer.
522. Text attribute table (TAT) (TAT) Text attribute table for an annotation subclass in a coverage. In addition to user-defined attributes, the TAT contains a sequence number and text feature…
523. text symbol A text style defined by font, size, character spacing, color, and so on, used to label maps and coverage features in ARC/INFO.
524. thematic data See descriptive data.
525. Theme A user-defined perspective on a coverage, grid, tin or image geographic data set specified, if applicable, by a coverage name and feature class or data…
526. Thiessen polygons Polygons whose boundaries define the area that is closest to each point relative to all other points. Thiessen polygons are generated from a set of points.
527. TIC (1) Thermionic Integrated Circuit. (2) Technical Information Center.
528. TIC file The coverage file used to store tic coordinates and tic IDs for a coverage.
529. tic match tolerance The maximum distance allowed between an existing tic and a tic being digitized.
530. Tile Pipe made of baked clay.
531. TIN Theater Intelligence Networks.
532. to-node Of an arc's two endpoints, the one last digitized. See also from-node.
533. TOL file A coverage file that contains processing tolerances (fuzzy, tic match, dangle length) and editing tolerances (weed, grain, edit distance, snap distance…
534. Topographic map A map indicating surface elevation and slope. U.S. Geological Survey quadrangle series maps showing the shape of the earth's surface by contours.
535. Topography The shape of the Earth's surface; the relative position and elevations of natural and human-made features of an area.
536. topological overlay An analysis procedure for determining the spatial coincidence of geographic features. ARC/INFO supports overlay among and between all feature classes.
537. Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) (TIGER) The Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing data format used by the U.S. Census Bureau to support census programs and surveys.
538. topology The geometric arrangement of a computer system. Common topologies include a bus (network topology in which nodes are connected to a single cable with…
539. Tour A tour is a minimum-impedance path that starts at an origin, visits a number of stops and returns to the origin visiting the stops only once.
540. tracing The process of determining which portions of a network connect.
541. trade-area map A map showing the region from which a store derives a certain percentage of its revenues.
542. transaction Includes any series of related steps carried out as part of a prearranged plan.
543. transformation (TRANZ-for-MAY-shun) In medicine, the change that a normal cell undergoes as it becomes malignant.
544. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) (TCP/IP) A collection of protocols that define the basic workings of the features of the Internet.
545. Transportation The means and aids for conveying people and goods. For example, resources describing roads, airports and airstrips, shipping routes, tunnels, railways and…
546. traveling salesman problem This is a classic tour problem in which a hypothetical salesman must find the most efficient sequence of destinations in his territory, stopping only once…
547. Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) (TIN) A surface representation derived from irregularly spaced sample points and breakline features.
548. triangulation A method of surveying in the location of an object may be calculated from the known locations of two other objects.
549. trusted login A user is said to have a trusted login to another computer when that user is not prompted for a password when accessing the remote computer.
550. tuple A row in a relational table; synonymous with record, observation.
551. Turn The fourth community card. Put out face up, by itself. Also known as "fourth street."
552. turn impedance The impedance or cost of making a turn at a network node. A turn impedance for making a left turn can be different from that of a right turn or a U-turn…
553. turntable An INFO file containing the turn impedances between pairs of network links. There can be sixteen possible turn impedances between four network links…
554. U.S. National Map Accuracy Standards (USNMAS) (USNMAS) Accuracy standards for published maps in English units defining measurements for horizontal and vertical accuracy.
555. undershoot An arc that does not extend far enough to intersect another arc. See also dangling arc.
556. Union An organization of workers formed for the purpose of collective bargaining.
557. United States Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) (FGDC) Composed of representatives of several federal agencies and GIS vendors, the FGDC has the lead role in defining spatial metadata standards, which it…
558. universe polygon The first record in a polygon attribute table. It represents the area beyond the outer boundary of the coverage.
559. upstream The region extending in a 5' direction from a gene.
560. user ID A file assigned to every user and server that uniquely identifies them to IBM® Lotus® Notes® and IBM® Lotus® Domino™.
561. USGS Digital Elevation Model (DEM) (DEM) A digital elevation model produced by the Survey Branch of the United States Department of the Interior, consisting of a regular array of elevations…
562. Utility and Communication Energy, water and waste systems, and communications infrastructure and services.
563. value attribute table (VAT) (VAT) Value attribute table. A table containing attributes for a grid. In addition to user-defined attributes, the VAT contains the values assigned to cells in…
564. vector any living creature that transmits an infectious agent to humans.
565. Vector product format (VPF) (VPF) a digital geographic vector-based format used by the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency for the distribution of its vector data sets.
566. Vector Property Map (VPM) (VPM) It is the product of the digital Coordinate Geometry entered property lines for the District of Columbia.
567. Vector relational format (VRF) (VRF) A relational model-based format very similar to the DMA VPF (Defense Mapping Agency Vector Product Format).
568. vertex One of a set of ordered x,y coordinates that constitutes a line.
569. view A logical table whose data are not physically stored. You define a view to access a subset of the columns stored in a row, access a set of columns stored…
570. virtual table See view.
571. Ward A district used in a general law city. Similar to a single-member district, except that in Texas, most municipalities that have a ward system elect two…
572. watch file A text file that records all nongraphic input and output during an ARC/INFO session. Watch files can be edited and converted to AML programs.
573. weed tolerance The minimum allowable distance between any two vertices along an arc. Weed tolerance is a parameter that can be set before adding arc features.
574. Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) (WAIS) A client/server software system that provides sophisticated indexing of files based on all words in each file and provides scoring and "relevance…
575. Wide area network (WAN) (WAN) Computer data communications technology that connects computers at remote sites.
576. workspace An organized collection of documents, content sources, management folders, categories, document profiles, subscriptions, and discussions.
577. World Wide Web (WWW) (WWW) Developed by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). Consortium in Switzerland as a distributed hypermedia server.
578. X Windows A system developed at MIT that allows applications to be displayed in windows and shared among different workstations and terminals.
579. X Windows/Motif ARC/INFO and ArcView operate in the X Windows/Motif environment on all supported UNIX workstation platforms.
580. X-Open Consortium An association of American and European vendors formed in 1984 to promote open systems.
581. X.25 A standard protocol for data communications.
582. X.400 ISO standard for electronic mail.
583. XPG3 An X/Open software standard for UNIX Operating Systems. IBM provides a cshell variable named PSALLOC to make AIX XPG3-compliant, resulting in adding more…
584. z-value The value of a surface at a particular x,y location (e.g., elevation). Often referred to as spot values or spot elevations.
585. Z39.50 An ANSI protocol standard for WAN (wide area network) information query and exchange to share library referencing requests via distributed electronic…
586. zoom To enlarge and display greater detail of a portion of a geographic data set.