GISP - Geographic Information Systems Professional Database Design and Management Questions and Answers

Question 1

A GIS analyst receives a single table of property data containing parcel ID, owner name, owner address, zoning code, and zoning description.
They observe that for every parcel owned by the same person, the owner's name and address are repeated.
Furthermore, the zoning description is repeated for every parcel with the same zoning code.
This design violates which principle of database normalization?

Accepted Answer

Third Normal Form (3NF), because it contains transitive dependencies.

Answer

First Normal Form (1NF), because fields contain non-atomic values.

Answer

Data indexing, because the redundant data slows down queries.

Answer

Referential integrity, because foreign keys are not properly defined.

Question 2

A GIS administrator needs to enforce a rule for a 'Water_Pipes' feature class that restricts the 'Material' attribute to a specific list of values: 'Ductile Iron', 'PVC', or 'Cast Iron'. This rule must apply to all new features and ensure data consistency across the geodatabase. Which geodatabase component is the most appropriate and efficient tool for this task?

Accepted Answer

A coded value domain applied to the 'Material' field.

Answer

A subtype for each material type.

Answer

A relationship class linking to a materials table.

Answer

A topology rule to validate material connections.

Question 3

A multi-user enterprise geodatabase is used to manage a city's utility network. To accommodate long-running projects and daily maintenance tasks, multiple editors must be able to work on the data simultaneously without locking features or directly editing the production database. Edits need to be isolated until they can be reviewed and merged. Which database functionality is designed to support this workflow?

Accepted Answer

Versioning, which allows multiple, concurrent states of the database.

Answer

Geodatabase archiving to track historical changes.

Answer

Check-out/Check-in replication for disconnected editing.

Answer

Database indexing to improve query performance.

Question 4

Which of the following SQL queries would correctly select all cities from a 'cities' table that have a population greater than 1,000,000 and return only the 'city_name' and 'state_name' columns?

Accepted Answer

SELECT city_name, state_name FROM cities WHERE population > 1000000;

Answer

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE population > 1000000;

Answer

SELECT city_name, state_name HAVING population > 1000000 FROM cities;

Answer

LIST city_name, state_name FROM cities WHERE population > 1000000;

Question 5

In a relational database design, two tables, `Parcels` and `Owners`, need to be linked. The `Owners` table has a primary key `OwnerID`. To correctly establish a one-to-many relationship where one owner can have many parcels, what must exist in the `Parcels` table?

Accepted Answer

A foreign key field that references the `OwnerID` in the `Owners` table.

Answer

A primary key that is identical to the `OwnerID`.

Answer

A spatial index to link the geometries.

Answer

A subtype field based on the `OwnerID`.

Question 6

Which statement best describes a fundamental difference between the georelational data model (e.g., shapefile) and an object-based data model (e.g., geodatabase feature class)?

Accepted Answer

The object-based model stores spatial and attribute data as an integrated unit, allowing for advanced behaviors like validation rules and relationships.

Answer

The georelational model stores spatial and attribute data in a single file for efficiency.

Answer

Only the georelational model is capable of storing vector data such as points, lines, and polygons.

Answer

The object-based model is an older, simpler structure that is more widely compatible with different GIS software.