Shapefile
A Shapefile is a popular geospatial vector data format developed by Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute) for storing geographic information system (GIS) data. It consists of a collection of files that collectively represent geographic features such as points, lines, and polygons, along with associated attributes. The main components of a Shapefile include a .shp file containing the geometry, a .shx file containing the shape index, and a .dbf file containing attribute data. Shapefiles can also include additional files for storing metadata, projections, and other information. Shapefiles are widely used in GIS software for mapping, spatial analysis, and visualization tasks due to their simplicity, compatibility, and support across various GIS platforms. However, they have limitations such as a maximum file size of 2 GB and a lack of support for advanced spatial features compared to more modern formats like GeoJSON and File Geodatabase.