QGIS » QGIS Application

Many categorical raster datasets, such as those representing vegetation and landcover, have associated attribute tables. There are the usual value and count columns, but there are also often additional
fields that hold useful vegetation descriptions. These might include vegetation type, vegetation complex, landcover type etc. ERDAS Imagine raster files will have a .vat.dbf with these attributes.

It would be incredibly useful to be able to open this attribute table as you can with a vector dataset. Then queries could be run and the corresponding cells highlighted. Additional columns could be
added, and used to classify cells into new categories without having to do an r.recode or similar operation. For instance, you could assign weights this way, to prepare for site selection model.
Additionally, these attribute columns could be made available to style the raster via the Categorized or Rule based renderers. For example, a vegetation dataset could be brought in and styled by
the vegetation type attribute column. Or groups of vegetation/landcover types could be given a color with the Rule based renderer.