Inside the Geodatabase : Best Practices

Migrating from Single-user Geodatabases to Multiuser Geodatabases - Podcast available!

JonMurphy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:05:00 GMT

A new instructional series podcast is available called Migrating from Single-user Geodatabases to Multiuser Geodatabases. The podcast provides reasons to migrate from MS Access personal or file geodatabases to multiuser geodatabases. It also highlights...(read more)

Raster Clipping – Part B - Using an irregular shape to clip a raster dataset

JonMurphy — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:42:00 GMT

This is a follow up to last week’s post . Last week we talked about clipping raster datasets based on a single polygon or graphic. This week we will look at clipping a raster dataset based on selected features within a feature class. Sometimes you will...(read more)

Geodatabase Presentations from the 2009 Dev Summit

JonMurphy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:27:00 GMT

This week ESRI hosted the annual Developer Summit down in Palm Springs. The geodatabase team was there to answer user’s questions, announce a few of the 9.4 projects that are in the works, and give several technical sessions. I’ve gathered the slides...(read more)

New Geodatabase SDK Article: “Common Geodatabase API Programming Mistakes”

brentardenpierce — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:53:00 GMT

We’ve added a new article to the Geodatabase SDK entitled “Common Geodatabase API Programming Mistakes”. It’s a list of mistakes we’ve seen a lot of users make and that will cause either unwanted behavior or a performance hit. This is going to be a living...(read more)

Application Developers Tuning Tip: Keeping Datasets Open

brentardenpierce — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:59:00 GMT

Opening a dataset such as a table or a feature class from a geodatabase can be an expensive operation. With this in mind, application developers should try to minimize the number of times they open datasets by following these patterns: Keep datasets from...(read more)

Using the ComReleaser to manage the lifetime of cursors in .NET

brentardenpierce — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:36:00 GMT

Geodatabase cursors should always be explicitly destroyed in a runtime environment that uses garbage collection. The rule of thumb is to always release a COM object as soon as the application is done using the reference. This is especially important with...(read more)

Geodatabase replication and compress

JonMurphy — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:15:00 GMT

There is new documentation available which talks about some best practices when using the compress command while also employing geodatabase replication. Compress is a process run periodically by an ArcSDE administrator to reduce the size of the geodatabase...(read more)

Migrating your existing data into the Geodatabase

JonMurphy — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:15:00 GMT

While I was at the user conference earlier this year I was getting a lot of questions about migrating to the geodatabase from other data formats. I talked it over with Derek Law and he thought he’d make a podcast about it (we’ll link to that podcast when...(read more)

New help topics provided on geodatabase replication

JonMurphy — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:05:00 GMT

More information on geodatabase replication has recently been added to the help system and to KB articles. This should help address some of the more commonly asked questions. The following describes the new information and where to find it: Replicating...(read more)

Working with the Connect and Disconnect commands when editing a Geometric Network

brentardenpierce — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:04:00 GMT

The following post was contributed by Craig Gillgrass a product engineer on the geodatabase team who spends the lion’s share of his time working with geometric networks. The topic of when to use the Connect and Disconnect commands when editing geometric...(read more)

ArcGIS Image Server vs ArcSDE - Comparison of managed raster datasets

JonMurphy — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:51:00 GMT

Given the response to our last raster post and the interest in image server, I talked with the Raster team to see if we could do a follow up post which compared storing rasters in a geodatabase to using image server. Melanie Harlow, a product engineer...(read more)

Why should I be making direct connections to an ArcSDE geodatabase?

brentardenpierce — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:35:00 GMT

As I was at the UC this year talking with geodatabase users, it became clear to me that there are still a large number of geodatabase users out there who are connecting to an ArcSDE geodatabase through an application server connection. While both connection...(read more)

Road Ahead - New workflow for mosaicking raster datasets

JonMurphy — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:57:00 GMT

The following post was written by Simon Woo, a product engineer on the geodatabase team specializing in Raster support in the geodatabase. Previous versions of ArcGIS have provided various mosaicking workflows. We’ve tried to make the mosaicking experience...(read more)

Developer Tips - Qualified field names in ArcSDE

JonMurphy — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:13:00 GMT

This post was provided by geodatabase Product Engineer James MacKay. There are fourteen field names that cause fields to behave slightly different in ArcSDE. They are: AREA POINTS FID EMINX EMINY EMINZ MIN_MEASURE LEN NUMOFPTS ENTITY EMAXX EMAXY EMAXZ...(read more)

Developer Tips - Using the Field Checker

brentardenpierce — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:40:00 GMT

This post was written by geodatabase Product Engineer James MacKay. James works on the geodatabase development team and is responsible for a lot of the geodatabase SDK that is generated.

The IFieldChecker interface provides a way to validate fields for a specific workspace before they’re created. Reserved keywords, special characters and maximum field name lengths are properties that vary between different types of workspaces and DBMSs; the field checker will not only detect fields that violate these rules, but it will generate a “fixed” fields collection with a similar (but valid) name. There are three common cases where field checkers are useful:

Creating new feature classes or tables
Adding fields to existing datasets
Generate target dataset fields for use in the feature data converter

A field checker should always be used whenever an application allows users to manually enter field names, but it’s a good defensive programming pattern to use them all of the time. The following code shows how to validate fields prior to a CreateTable or CreateFeatureClass call.

Geoprocessing users: The geoprocessor also exposes field checking capability. See this article for more information.

public IFields ValidateFields(IWorkspace workspace, IFields fields)

{

      // Create and initialize a field checker.

      IFieldChecker fieldChecker = new FieldCheckerClass();

      fieldChecker.ValidateWorkspace = workspace;



      // Generate a validated fields collection.

      IFields validatedFields = null;

      IEnumFieldError enumFieldError = null;

      fieldChecker.Validate(fields, out enumFieldError, out validatedFields);

      // You can either notify the user of any errors or just skip this step.

      IFieldError fieldError = null;

      while ((fieldError = enumFieldError.Next()) != null)

      {

            Console.WriteLine("Error in field {0}: {1}", fieldError.FieldIndex, fieldError.FieldError);

      }

      // Return the validated fields.

      return validatedFields;

}