The purpose of having a standardized naming convention is to provide an organized framework for the datasets, ensuring interoperability between users and platforms.
...
Two sets of population data for a particular country, one has the population for major cities and the other population data for small towns. The data for major cities are labeled with a “1” and the data for small towns are labeled with a “2”.
- Dataset 1: Major cities in Burundi from Government of Burundi at 1:1M scale
- Dataset 2: Cities in Burundi from Government of Burundi at 1:M scale
Dataset Names (interim solution):
- Dataset 1: bdi_pplp1_1m_gov
- Dataset 2: bdi_pplp2_1m_gov
Feature Class Name (long term solution):
- Combine the two feature classes to 1 using guidance from Verifying Geometry. The resulting label would be: bdi_pplp_1m_gov.
Special Case 2: Data do not span an entire country or region
...
Datasets not covering an entire country:
- Dataset 1: IDP Camps in Aceh, Indonesia
- Dataset 2: IDP Camps Afgooye Cooridor, Somalia
Resulting Dataset Names:
- Dataset 1: idn_aceh_cmpp_idp_1m_unhcr
- Dataset 2: som_afgooye_cmpp_idp_1m_unhcr
...
File naming within geodatabases
See also: Folder Structure and Archiving
...
The naming of datasets (feature classes) within a Geodatabase is identical to the scheme defined above. A geodatabase feature class, shapefile, and KML representation of the same dataset would have the same name (exclusive of the file extension). However, for geodatabases, the file naming convention must also define the names of the geodatabase and feature datasets which contain the feature classes. An example geodatabase can be found in the folder structure. See also: Folder Structure and Archiving
Geodatabase name: The name of the geodatabase is from the International Organization for Standarization (ISO) country code, ISO3 code of the country/region of interest. For example: wrl, afg, alb, etc.
...
- ISO3 Code – As with the geodatabase name, the first part of the naming convention consists of the ISO3 code. For example: wrl, afg, alb, etc.
- Topic – The topic corresponds to the folder in the data structure where the data would reside in flat file formats (shapefile, kml, xls, etc.). These topics can be found in the dataset naming codes table and in the folder structure.
Feature class name
...
: As described above, the feature classes are named using the naming standard outlined above as if they were shapefiles.
...