.. only:: html
|LS| Attribute Data
===============================================================================
Up to now, none of the changes we have made to the map have been influenced by
the objects that are being shown. In other words, all the land use areas look
alike, and all the roads look alike. When looking at the map, the viewers don't
know anything about the roads they are seeing; only that there is a road of a
certain shape in a certain area.
But the whole strength of GIS is that all the objects that are visible on the
map also have attributes. Maps in a GIS aren't just pictures. They represent
not only objects in locations, but also information about those objects.
**The goal of this lesson:** To explore the attribute data of an object and
understand what the various data can be useful for.
.. _backlink-labels-attribute-data-1:
|basic| |FA| Attribute data
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Open the attribute table for the :guilabel:`places` layer (refer back to the
section :ref:`tm_working_vector_data` if necessary). Which field would be the
most useful to represent in label form, and why?
:ref:`Check your results `
|IC|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You now know how to use the attribute table to see what is actually in the data
you're using. Any dataset will only be useful to you if it has the attributes
that you care about. If you know which attributes you need, you can quickly
decide if you're able to use a given dataset, or if you need to look for
another one that has the required attribute data.
|WN|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Different attributes are useful for different purposes. Some of them can be
represented directly as text for the map user to see. You'll learn how to do
this in the next lesson.
.. Substitutions definitions - AVOID EDITING PAST THIS LINE
This will be automatically updated by the find_set_subst.py script.
If you need to create a new substitution manually,
please add it also to the substitutions.txt file in the
source folder.
.. |FA| replace:: Follow Along:
.. |IC| replace:: In Conclusion
.. |LS| replace:: Lesson:
.. |WN| replace:: What's Next?
.. |basic| image:: /static/global/basic.png