Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Dumb question, but have you just tried manually adding WHERE at the beginning of the expression in the version of the dialog box you're getting?

not dumb at all! I did try - it seems like there should be a way to do it, but I kept getting syntax errors.

update: good + incredibly frustrating news: i tried the query again ('FEDERAL_FACILITY_CODE'='Y') and now...it works? I think it was because I was putting a space on either side of the equals sign?

very sorry to have wasted your time. I like GIS but things like this really frustrate me.

No worries - I teach it to grad students and it still gives me fits. The extra space = syntax error thing is why I always try to generate the expression from the boxes. As you use it, you build up this whole catalog of mysterious procedural taboos and half the time you forget why they're so important - until some mysterious thing breaks and you have to troubleshoot every little piece of your process. But yeah, it can be very rewarding and a lot of fun!

Yeah, I'm pretty excited to be using it. I took a intro GIS course in grad school, and dabbled with it at home here and there the last few years, but I just started a new position at work where I can actually really use it for the first time for the purposes of analysis. I will definitely generate the expression from the boxes from now on!