This dataset includes all cases reviewed by the Planning Department. Many cases are related to Building Permits. A Building Permit may produce a number of cases with the Planning Department, for example a single Building Permit may require a Transportation Study case and an Environmental Review case. Some cases are not related to Building Permits, e.g Variances or Conditional Use Authorizations. The type of case can be seen in the CaseType_Desc field. Additional information can be found in the dataset's metadata (the .xml file within the .zip). It is important to note that older cases (prior to 1 January 1999) were not consistently recorded in this database. Should you wish to analyze trends within this data it is advisable to remove these older cases (those where the entry in the 'FileDate' field is older than 1 Jan, 1999). This dataset is in a GIS Shapefile format. This format can be read and mapped by most Geographical Information Systems. The .DBF file can be loaded into MS Access, Excel or other database/spreadsheet programs. Data is updated every night.