Overview of Geographies, Geographic Entities, and Locations

Geography is a physical space on Earth, such as a location or region, that's defined by a boundary. For example, it maybe existing geopolitical locations such as San Jose or Peru.

These geographical locations are used in applications to manage business requirements such as sales territories, transportation deliveries, taxation, logistics, and so on.

Geography Type

A divisional grouping of geographies is named as Geography Types. It could be a geopolitical division such as Country, First Order Administrative Divisions (example: State, Province, District, and so on), City, Town, Village, or Non-Administrative Divisions (example: Southwest China, Northern California, and so on) or physical geographic divisions such as Island, Continent, Mountain, and so on.

Geography Use

Specifying the purpose and use of these geographies is known as Geography Use. Data could be classified for use by processes such as Taxation, Sales, Transportation, Marketing and so on.

Master Reference Geography Use

Master Reference Geography Use is data that's classified as being the source of truth. This data is used as a reference for creating User-defined Geography Uses and as the source when working with geographical data such as validating addresses or importing data. This data can be obtained from a third party or manually entered. It is defined by widely recognized administrative or political boundaries such as States, Provinces, Counties, Cities, and so on.

Master Reference Geographies

Master Reference Geographies are geographical boundary names and physical boundaries that are classified as being part of the Master Reference Geography Use. Examples include the State of California, the Province of Alberta, The Country of India, and so on.

Master Reference Geography Type

Master Reference Geography Type is a layer of Master Reference Geographies. Examples of Master Reference Geography Types would include States, Cities, Provinces, Countries, and so on.