Plotting X,Y points from a table

It is not unusual to get data from outside sources that is nothing more than a table with some information that includes X and Y data. This may come from a surveyor, someone that collected data with their smartphone, or some other source. The data might be a spreadsheet, a text file, CSV file, or even a database table.

If the data includes coordinates for the location, you can turn these into points within a map. This is called an event layer. The coordinates can be in any known coordinate system as long as they are all the same, meaning that all coordinates for all the records in the table must be listed in the same coordinate system.

In this recipe, you will plot the locations of crimes from a standalone database table. This table has several records, each of which has a latitude and longitude coordinate. You will use that information to plot the location.