Data Formats
Data appears in different sizes and shapes, it can be numerical data, text, multimedia, research data, or a few other types of data. The data format is said to be a kind of format which is used for coding the data. The data is coded in different ways. It is being coded, so that it can be read, recognized, and used by the different applications and programs.
Data Formats
In the information technology, the data format may be referred in different ways. It can be termed as the data type, which is a constraint in the type system which was positioned after the interpretation of the data. It is also termed as a file format which is being used for storing the encoding data in a computer file.
Three data formats:
File-Based Data Format
This type of data format includes either one file or more than one file. These files are then stored in any of the arbitrary folders. In most of the cases, it uses the single file only for example DGN. But then there are cases, which even includes at least three files. The filename extension of all these three files is different from each other. That is SHX, SHP, and DBF. All three files are important and are required
Directory-Based Data Format
In this type of data format, whether there is one file or there is more than one file, they are all stored in the parent folder in a particular manner. There are some cases where the requirement of an additional folder is there in the file tree in some other location so that it can be accessed easily. It is a possibility that data source is the directory itself. There are many files present in the directory, which are represented at the available data’s layers. Some of the examples of Directory-Based Data Format are US Census TIGER and ESRI ArcInfo Coverages.
Database Connections
In one respect, the database connections are quite similar to the above-mentioned data formats that are file and directory-based data format. The database connection generally consists of the following information like Host that is the server’s direction, Database Name, the Username and Passwords, Geographic Column name, and the table name or the view name. A few examples of Database Connections are MySQL, ESRI, PostGIS, and ArcSDE.