Geodatabase Essentials - Archiving

Geodatabase archiving provides a mechanism for capturing and managing a record of your edits as features and rows are updated over time. This record is automatically updated as edits are saved and is available for query and analysis. This is handy when you want to go back and see how a feature has changed over time, see how a feature looked at a certain point in time, see how a certain area may have once looked, etc…

Archiving supports the complete geodatabase data model so topologies, geometric networks, feature datasets, relationship classes, tables and feature classes can all participate.

So here’s how it works:

First you enable all or a subset of your data as archiving. Only versioned data may be archiving enabled though, so you may have to first register your data as versioned. When the data has archiving enabled a class is associated with the original class known as the archive class. It is this archive class that maintains a record of the modifications made to the original data. The archive class has the same name as the original data, but with an "_H" appended on to the end. For example, if a feature class named "Roads" had archiving enabled on it, the archive class would be named "Roads_H".

What’s nice about archiving is that any changes made to a archiving enabled class are recorded automatically. It’s not something that is added to your workflow that you have to remind yourself to do after you make your edits. Once archiving is enabled on a class, any changes are automatically managed by the archive class.

A few new videos were added to the help system at 9.3 to demonstrate geodatabase archiving functionality. The videos offer examples on:

• Enabling archiving on a dataset
• Creating an historical marker and connecting to an historical version
• Using the geodatabase history viewer
• Working with the archive class

You can check the videos out HERE