Shapefiles File Format

The shapefiles file is a spatial data format used inside ArcGIS. It stores spatial data files with geographical and attribute data in non-topological data formats.

A shape file consists of up to five objects. Its Extension and meaning are as follows:
1. Spatial data file (. SHP): geometric features of geographic data storage: coordinates, length, area, etc.
2. Spatial Data Index files (. shx) store the indexes of geometric features of geographic data. (Note: The theme is different from the theme 4)
3. attribute data files (. DBF) DBASE files store attribute information of geographic data. The topic feature attribute tables also exist in the form of DBF Files.
4. The geographic data index file (. SBN,. sbx) exists only when querying the spatial relationship between topics, connecting the space of topics, and indexing the shape field. They are used to store the index of the feature.
5. The associated file (. Ain,. AIH) exists only when the table is joined (LINKS. They are used to store the indexes of the joined fields of the joined data table or feature Attribute Table.