Chapter 4. Using Vector Data
When we work with vector sources, we basically have to deal with two types of data: geometry and attributes. The geometry part is responsible for storing the position of our shapes in one of the projections. We make spatial (topological) analysis with the geometries of our data.
Attribute data is responsible for storing the related information for every feature. It is also used for various analysis. Furthermore, it is utterly important when it comes to querying or styling. These are considered as basic or core capabilities in GIS software, although modern web mapping libraries tend to lack in effective attribute management. This is the reason why we will mainly focus on attribute data.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Object-oriented attribute management
- Relational considerations
- Creating thematic layers dynamically
- Saving spatial data to our server
- Modifying geometries in place
