Glossary

Attribute: A piece of data relating to a feature, for example the name or population of a country.

Attribute table: The table showing the attribute values for all the features in a layer (aka. the .dbf file).

Coordinate Reference System (CRS): The system used to reference the x and y coordinates of your data (may be projected or geographic).

Dashboard: A graphical user interface providing easily digestible views of a particular process or objective.

Dialog: A small window that opens to allow you to choose options, open or save files, etc.

Feature: An individual object in your data - for example a single line, point or polygon.

Infographic: A collection of imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic or distills a theme.

Layer: A set of data, usually of one type which can be turned on and off, moved above or below other layers, and styled/labelled.

Plugin: An optional application which provides additional functionality to QGIS.

Raster: Map data which is represented as an image, with pixel values of between 0 and 255.

Shapefile: A shapefile is possibly the most commonly supported vector file format. Despite the name, a shapefile isn’t a single file but is a group of files sharing the same name but with different file extensions.

Style: The rules used to represent data objects with colour, shapes, icons or charts according to the values of their attributes.

Vector: Data which is represented as sets of coordinates, producing lines, points or polygons.

---