Bridging the Gap: SQL and ArcGIS Querying (Virtual Lunch & Learn)

Registration required: Zoom

Presenter:  Matt Dube, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Data Science, University of Maine at Augusta

GIS shapefiles and standalone tables are fundamentally built on the premise of relational databases. As such, the query mechanisms in GIS are built around the language of relational databases, namely SQL. In this Lunch and Learn, we will talk about the crosswalk between these two approaches to querying and the underlying mathematical operations at play (don't worry; it won't be mathy).

The talk is designed for someone from either perspective to gain knowledge of the other and to encourage geospatial professionals to think through their queries as an exercise in tabular thinking, enhancing their problem solving skills in selection tasks. This is effectively a streamlining of a lecture that I would give (or advocate for giving) in an introductory GIS course in a university setting. It is quite likely that if you did not learn GIS from a computing-oriented professor that you will learn a lot about what's going on with your query system by attending this talk. If you are a computing professional that has never seen a GIS, this will serve as an introduction about how to leverage your knowledge of SQL to query features within a GIS environment.