The goal of this page is to offer a place to list common terminology used in the geospatial field which differs across software platforms.
By 'cross-walking' terms that are easily baffling to new users or easily confused if taken out of their native software context, this page attempts to dispel head scratching and increase efficiency. Too often people that are highly competent in software use and development can't figure out the basics because of strange or misleading terminology.
The practice of switching, integrating, or utilizing new software in exising workflows is hard enough in a technical sense. So let's try not to make it harder!
- Note: Depending on what is more useful to the CUGOS group this page can become more of a glossary, or stay a simple a page of cross-walked terms.
- We need ideas about how best to organize this information so let us know if you have suggestions.
Starting the list with some of the most confusing or software-specific terms in my experience (Dane)....
| Term | Application | Meaning in the Native App | General Disambiguation |
| Dissolve | ArcGIS | Dissolve boundaries between geometries | Equivalent to OpenGIS ST_Union (more info) |
| Coverage | Geoserver | An image datasource | A Raster or Tile image served via WMS (Web Map Service) |
| Coverage | Arc/Info | An file format for vector data that preceded the shapefile | No equivalent and not readable in most modern software. |
| Feature Class | ArcGIS | Spatial data of similiar type, attributes, and projection | A table in a spatial database, whether .mdb, .gdb, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, etc. |
| Tasks | ArcGIS Server | A user interface to GIS functionality in ArcGIS Server or Explorer | Web Services that offer analysis functionality like pyWPS, WPServer, or custom database applications using PostGIS |
