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One of the more difficult aspects of getting up to speed with GIS software is the wide variety of data formats that can be used. Just to name a few we have two or three types of geodatabase including file and enterprise for ArcGIS Pro and a third, personal geodatabases, for ArcMap. Each geodatabase can include feature datasets, feature classes, rasters, and stand-alone tables along with several other less commonly used formats. In addition, we still frequently use shapefiles and to a lesser degree we use DEM and TIN datasets. Web service layers streamed from ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise are being used more and more as well. At times we may even load point data from csv files and other spreadsheet formats. And what are these things called packages? Obviously this is a lot to grasp if you’re new to GIS, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s easy to understand why many GIS professionals, when confronting yet another format, simply can’t digest the information and understand how one format is different from all the other formats.
At the risk of introducing you to yet another format I am going to do just that in this article because there are some significant advantages provided by what is known as map and layer files. Map and layer files, while representing yet another format, provide some significant advantages that you need to be aware of and are generally easy to use. By the end of this article you’ll have a much better understanding of what these file types are and how you can use them effectively.
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