Modeling Our World: The ESRI Guide to Geodatabase Design [Paperback]

Michael Zeiler (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1879102625 | ISBN-13: 978-1879102620 | Publication Date: January 1, 2000

Geographic data models are digital frameworks that describe the location and characteristics of things in the world around us. With a geographic information system, we can use these models as lenses to see, interpret, and analyze the infinite complexity of our natural and man-made environments. With the geodatabase, a new geographic data model introduced with ArcInfo 8, you can extend significantly the level of detail and range of accuracy with which you can model geographic reality in a database environment.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Zieler-Designer for ESRI

David Arctur is a product specialist at ESRI and is part of the geodatabase development team. He has written for the "Earth Observation & Mapping Magazine," "IEEE Computer Magazine," and "International Journal of Geographical Information Science," He lives in Austin, Texas. Michael Zeiler is a technical writer and data model specialist at ESRI with experience in diagramming GIS concepts, building data models, and programming. He is the author of "Exploring ArcObjects," "Inside ARC/INFO," and "Modeling Our World," He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: ESRI Press (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1879102625
• ISBN-13: 978-1879102620
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #246,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is a reference., July 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Modeling Our World: The ESRI Guide to Geodatabase Design (Paperback)

If you want to learn this much GIS terminology, you have to read hundereds of pages of ESRI's guide or reference books. This is an excellent reference in GIS literature that introduces hundereds of terms in a reasonable size and good price. The author went to the very corners of GIS-data-base structure. For any GIS-term you can find an illustration and explanation. The text is clearly written by an ArcInfo User that is some how "heavy". However,as an ArcGIS/ArcView user it was useful for me. The book title is somehow misleading at the first glance, but when you go inside, you can see no other title can fit this topic. BUY IT, if you want to know the GIS terminology to the extreme details, including backgrounds, comparative explanations and so on. DON'T BUY IT, if you want to do GIS modelling buy reading this book, as the text is mostly concentrates on data base.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nicely produced but disappointing content, June 6, 2003

By 

Karen Nelson (Takoma Park, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Modeling Our World: The ESRI Guide to Geodatabase Design (Paperback)

I am having a hard time imagining who this book would be useful for. If you are new to GIS, the explanations are pretty dry and contain a good deal of jargon, and there are absolutely NO examples or how-to's. You cannot read this book and expect to learn to do even the simplest operation in GIS. Moreover, without concrete examples, its hard to conceptualize how it all fits together. On the other hand, for someone like me, pretty familiar with basic GIS but wanting to get into more depth, it was too elementary and repetitive. For example, I can't count how many times the author says there are 3 basic kinds of data in a geodatabase... Except for the last 3 chapters (rasters, TINs and location finders) there was little I didn't already know, at least intuitively.

The book is very nicely produced, however. It gives the feel of Powerpoint slides plus the narrative you would hear if you went to an ESRI workshop. Literally every piece of information is explained both graphically and in the text. And of course as software books go, its not too expensive. However, you can get most of this information for free, from the extensive help files that come with ArcView -- plus examples and how-to-use-the-software instructions.

If you're just getting started with GIS, there are lots of getting-started books out there. If you need a lot of depth, try Zeiler's ArcObjects 2-volume set (yes, same author, but much more meaty).

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Zeiler knows GIS, May 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Modeling Our World: The ESRI Guide to Geodatabase Design (Paperback)

This book works very well for people new to GIS as well as experienced users. The fundamentally important concepts to GIS are explained both generally as well as from within the perspective of the new ESRI ArcInfo 8 software. Difficult and new concepts such as versioning, geometric networks, and raster imagery are particularly well explained. The book is not a software user manual, but rather an explanation of the fundamental GIS concepts, particularly those important to the new Geodatabase.

The book is a veritable corucopia of colorful graphics, figures, and imagery. Many readers will be able to achieve an 80% understanding of the material merely by closely studying the figures and examples - kind of the National Geographic "read the captions" approach.

The text contains lots of class/component diagrams that give a very good overview of the underlaying Geodatabase software architecture. This is a book that I will use and refer back to on a frequent basis. Rock on!