<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: GIS Concepts that everyone can understand
Review: Admittedly this is an ESRI perspective of modeling. But as the leaders in the field of GIS software, the ESRI perspective is the accepted standard. This book does an excellent job of explaining most of the basic concepts that are used in GIS. Terms like TIN and raster are better explained in this book then anywhere else that I have seen. Too often a GIS textbook tries to explain visual concepts with a few black and white diagrams. Not here, the graphics are colorful and very well integrated with the descriptions. This book is where anyone interested in GIS should start. It is a must have for anyone teaching or studying GIS.
Rating: 
Summary: Nicely produced but disappointing content
Review: I am having a hard time imagining who this book would be useful for. If you are new to GIS, the explanations are pretty dry and contain a good deal of jargon, and there are absolutely NO examples or how-to's. You cannot read this book and expect to learn to do even the simplest operation in GIS. Moreover, without concrete examples, its hard to conceptualize how it all fits together. On the other hand, for someone like me, pretty familiar with basic GIS but wanting to get into more depth, it was too elementary and repetitive. For example, I can't count how many times the author says there are 3 basic kinds of data in a geodatabase... Except for the last 3 chapters (rasters, TINs and location finders) there was little I didn't already know, at least intuitively. The book is very nicely produced, however. It gives the feel of Powerpoint slides plus the narrative you would hear if you went to an ESRI workshop. Literally every piece of information is explained both graphically and in the text. And of course as software books go, its not too expensive. However, you can get most of this information for free, from the extensive help files that come with ArcView -- plus examples and how-to-use-the-software instructions. If you're just getting started with GIS, there are lots of getting-started books out there. If you need a lot of depth, try Zeiler's ArcObjects 2-volume set (yes, same author, but much more meaty).
Rating:
Summary: Nicely produced but disappointing content
Review: I am having a hard time imagining who this book would be useful for. If you are new to GIS, the explanations are pretty dry and contain a good deal of jargon, and there are absolutely NO examples or how-to's. You cannot read this book and expect to learn to do even the simplest operation in GIS. Moreover, without concrete examples, its hard to conceptualize how it all fits together. On the other hand, for someone like me, pretty familiar with basic GIS but wanting to get into more depth, it was too elementary and repetitive. For example, I can't count how many times the author says there are 3 basic kinds of data in a geodatabase... Except for the last 3 chapters (rasters, TINs and location finders) there was little I didn't already know, at least intuitively. The book is very nicely produced, however. It gives the feel of Powerpoint slides plus the narrative you would hear if you went to an ESRI workshop. Literally every piece of information is explained both graphically and in the text. And of course as software books go, its not too expensive. However, you can get most of this information for free, from the extensive help files that come with ArcView -- plus examples and how-to-use-the-software instructions. If you're just getting started with GIS, there are lots of getting-started books out there. If you need a lot of depth, try Zeiler's ArcObjects 2-volume set (yes, same author, but much more meaty).
Rating:
Summary: It is a reference.
Review: I really like this book... It's well-written, and I am finding it helpful for understanding some of the concepts new to the world of ArcGIS. HOWEVER, to be a useful reference, there needs to be a much, much larger and comprehensive index. That's plain frustrating.
Rating: 
Summary: Great content--needs better index
Review: I really like this book... It's well-written, and I am finding it helpful for understanding some of the concepts new to the world of ArcGIS. HOWEVER, to be a useful reference, there needs to be a much, much larger and comprehensive index. That's plain frustrating.
Rating:
Summary: It is a reference.
Review: If you want to learn this much GIS terminology, you have to read hundereds of pages of ESRI's guide or reference books. This is an excellent reference in GIS literature that introduces hundereds of terms in a reasonable size and good price. The author went to the very corners of GIS-data-base structure. For any GIS-term you can find an illustration and explanation. The text is clearly written by an ArcInfo User that is some how "heavy". However,as an ArcGIS/ArcView user it was useful for me. The book title is somehow misleading at the first glance, but when you go inside, you can see no other title can fit this topic. BUY IT, if you want to know the GIS terminology to the extreme details, including backgrounds, comparative explanations and so on. DON'T BUY IT, if you want to do GIS modelling buy reading this book, as the text is mostly concentrates on data base.
Rating:
Summary: Zeiler knows GIS
Review: This book works very well for people new to GIS as well as experienced users. The fundamentally important concepts to GIS are explained both generally as well as from within the perspective of the new ESRI ArcInfo 8 software. Difficult and new concepts such as versioning, geometric networks, and raster imagery are particularly well explained. The book is not a software user manual, but rather an explanation of the fundamental GIS concepts, particularly those important to the new Geodatabase. The book is a veritable corucopia of colorful graphics, figures, and imagery. Many readers will be able to achieve an 80% understanding of the material merely by closely studying the figures and examples - kind of the National Geographic "read the captions" approach. The text contains lots of class/component diagrams that give a very good overview of the underlaying Geodatabase software architecture. This is a book that I will use and refer back to on a frequent basis. Rock on!
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: This is a good book to learn geodatabase. I expect the author to add more explanations and examples about modeling geodatabase.
<< 1 >>
| 
