A joint attribute permits, as its name suggests, joining two attribute tables that describe entities sharing a common field. The operation produces a single table juxtaposing the table fields to join those of the original table. In a Geographical Information System the original table is often associated with entities located in a geographical layer, allowing for example to map data from a statistical table that has no spatial dimension. Joints attributes are used when one wishes to introduce new information in a geographic layer, for example data describing the businesses that you want to join to a layer of municipalities.

See: Database