2 Geographic Data Management

Creating a standalone table

The process for creating a standalone table containing only tabular data is similar to the process for creating a feature
class containing geographic features. The main difference is that you dont specify a coordinate system, tolerance, or
feature type.
Enter a name and alias
for the table.

To create a table, right-click the geodatabase in the Catalog tree,

point to New, and click Table.

As when creating a
feature class, if youre
using an ArcSDE
geodatabase, you can
specify a keyword to
handle special data
storage needs. In most
cases you can safely
accept the Default.

New tables have a

default ObjectID eld.
Specify additional elds

by typing the name and

data type in an empty
row.

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Using ArcGIS Desktop

Specifying additional elds
All tables and feature classes have required elds that are automatically created. Tables have an ObjectID eld, and a
simple feature class has an ObjectID eld and a Shape eld. The ObjectID uniquely identies each object, or feature,
while the Shape eld stores each features geometry (the coordinates). These elds have properties you can modify,
such as their aliases and geometry type, but the elds cannot be deleted. Beyond these required elds, you can add any
number of elds to a table or feature class to store descriptive information.
To add a eld, type the eld name in an empty row, select a data type for the eld, and then specify the eld properties
that appear in the box below (or accept the defaults). At this point youre only dening the elds in the tableyou add

data to the table later by importing it or by editing the table and entering the data.

To add a eld, type the eld name in an empty

row, and click the Data Type box in that row

to select the eld type. Then modify the eld

properties, as necessary, by clicking the box

to the right of the property name and typing a
value or selecting from the drop-down list.

The eld properties vary somewhat,

depending on the data type. Numeric types

include Precision and Scale.

Data types include numbers, text, dates, and binary large objects (BLOBsused to store and manage binary

information such as symbols and CAD geometries). Numbers can be short integers, long integers, single-precision
oating point numbers (often referred to as oats), and double-precision oating point numbers (commonly called
doubles). If you just need to store whole numbers, such as 12 or 12345678, specify a short or long integer. If you
need to store fractional numbers that have decimal places, such as 0.23 or 1234.5678, specify a oat or a double. When
choosing between a short or long integer, or between a oat or double, choose the data type that takes up the least
storage space required. The short integer type stores integers between -32,768 and 32767; use long integer for numbers
outside this range (either smaller or larger). The oat type stores fractional numbers between -3.4E-38 and 1.2E38; use

the double type for numbers outside this range.

If youre specifying numeric elds for a table in a le or personal geodatabase, you need only specify the data type.
If youre specifying numeric elds for an ArcSDE geodatabase, you additionally specify the precision, which is the
maximum length of the eld, and scale, which is the maximum number of decimal places. For example, if you specify
a oat with a precision of 4 and a scale of 2, the eld will accept 12.34there are four digits (dened by the precision)

and two of them are to the right of the decimal point (the scale).

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