[Mapserver-west] organizing spatial data

[Paul Ramsey]

Classic "it depends" question.
   The most common I have seen is on Theme, but that is probably  
because Theme is the most common search criteria for general GIS  
users.  For folks running a remote sensing shop, sensor would  
probably be the top level category, followed by acquisition time.   
So, how are you going to be using this data?
   For any "operational warehouse" situation, you hopefully won't  
have format/projection issues, as everything will have been  
normalized to the same format/projection at the time of addition.  
Keeping an "original" directory one level past the normalized data is  
good practice for audit.  I tend to make sure the date of data is in  
the filename too, as soon as I get a second copy of anything.
   Finally, try to avoid too much heirarchy, as it slows down people  
getting to what they want: the files.  If you find you have some  
organizational heirarchy, before creating it in the directory  
structure, create it in the name structure, so have Admin-Districts,  
Admin-Ownership rather than Admin/Districts, Admin/Ownership, and  
keep that up until the master list gets just too long and unwieldy to  
handle.
   I guess I am thinking less about portals here than fileservers  
that people will be using internally...
P.

On 24-Feb-06, at 10:09 AM, Ken-ichi wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I thought I'd ask an open-ended general GIS question: how do you  
> organize spatial data?  I know I sort of have a set directory  
> structure whenever I start a new GIS project, one largely based on  
> file formats I copied from a project I inherited when I first  
> started working with GIS, but it's probably not the best.  How do  
> you organize data for your own projects, or for multi-user  
> projects?  When you're searching for data on a portal, what do you  
> think is the best organizational principle?  Data type (vector/ 
> raster)?  Theme (transportation, environmental, cultural, etc.)?   
> Sensor?  Location?  Spatial reference system?
>
> -Ken-ichi
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