General terms for the Esri-terms "Layer" and "Feature Class"

Question

I am familiar with these terms used by Esri:

Layer

• Stores visual properties (color, symbols,…)
• does not store data (attributes, coordinates)
• links to a Feature Class (or raster data)

Feature Class

• a spatial dataset (attributes, coordinates)
• collections of points, lines, or polygons and their attributes
• no symbols (color, …)
• e.g. stored as shapefile on disk or feature class in a geodatabase

Do terms exist for them that can be used for (nearly) all GIS (independent of the manufacturer)?

I think "layer" can be used for all GIS but "Feature Class"?

I need the terms because I want to describe the functionality of a GIS independently of a manufacturer.

Answer 1

In place of feature class I would use Spatial Dataset in Vector Format initially, and then shorten to Vector Dataset.

I think layer can be considered to be an already vendor independent term.