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What is a polygon?

Companies are often most interested in maps which use polygons or shapefiles to define various boundaries. Postal code polygons, for example, can plot the exact boundaries of numerous postal codes across a country or area. These boundaries are formed when great quantities of singular points are connected to each-other across a map.

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Drawing a polygon on a map requires a dataset with specific geometry (GEOM). Geometry is more complex when you're dealing with polygons because — unlike drawing simple points — drawing polygons requires many connections between points which are all described with their own latitude and longitude values. For this reason, the geometry of a polygon normally contains a very long set of characters.

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Here is an example of the geometry (shape) data of the Netherlands:

"geometry":{"type""Polygon","coordinates":[[[6.074182570020923,53.510403347378144],[6.905139601274129,53.48216217713065],[7.092053256873896,53.144043280644894],[6.842869500362383,52.22844025329755],[6.589396599970826,51.852029120483394],[5.988658074577813,51.851615709025054],[6.15665815595878,50.80372101501058],[5.606975945670001,51.03729848896978],[4.973991326526914,51.47502370869813],[4.047071160507528,51.26725861266857],[3.314971144228537,51.34575511331991],[3.830288527043137,51.62054454203195],[4.705997348661185,53.091798407597764],[6.074182570020923,53.510403347378144]]]}

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