You have now seen how powerful geodatabase topologies can be to help you find and correct errors in your data. However, to use geodatabase topologies, your data must be stored in a geodatabase, and you must have a Standard or Advanced license. So, what do you do if you want to maintain data that is stored in a shapefile so that you do not introduce topological errors, or if you only have a Basic license? This is where a map topology can be used.

As mentioned in this chapter’s introduction, map topologies are temporary and do not allow you to validate data using rules. What they do allow you to do, though, is edit data using topology tools so that the existing spatial relationships are maintained. This keeps you from introducing any new errors into your data. Map topologies also have the advantage of allowing topology editing tools to be used on multiple data formats, including shapefiles, web services, and geodatabase feature class-based layers...