Importing existing data
Importing existing data into a geodatabase is one of the two primary ways to build a physical geodatabase schema (geodatabase structure). The second way is to manually create the geodatabase structure and the data. In this section, we will combine both methods to build the structure of the geodatabase and populate it with existing data.
Evaluating existing data
Before designing a file geodatabase and populating it with data, we should identify the source of the existing data and evaluate them. When we are evaluating existing data, we should answer the following questions:
- What is the format of the dataset?
- What is the geometry type of the dataset?
- What is the coordinate reference system?
- What is the reference scale (or resolution) of the dataset?
- What is the format of the initial dataset?
We will use four public datasets sources: Natural Earth (www.naturalearthdata.com), Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat), Urban Atlas from European Environment Agency (http://www.eea...
