Tag Archives: Versioning
New GUI for Geodatabase Administration
One of the most requested features on the ArcGIS Ideas page is to have a GUI for common administration tasks. This has been on our minds for a while as well and the geodatabase team has focused their efforts with the 10.1 release to produce one. So that you can apply your time more effectively, we’ve simplified and consolidated many routine and essential administrative tasks into a tasty new GUI called the Geodatabase Administration dialog.
Introducing Custom Steps in ArcGIS Workflow Manager
The notion of “custom steps” in ArcGIS Workflow Manager can be confusing. Many people hear “custom” and think immediately of software development. With Workflow Manager, the reality is that a workflow designer will create and configure many different step types by using the Workflow Manager Administrator application. Even steps available out-of-the box – including special purpose steps called “Custom Step Objects” – will likely be customized in Workflow Manager Administrator to your organizations specific environment.
This blog post will discuss step customization (somewhat), Custom Step Objects (mostly), and how they can help in your workflows. If you remember nothing else, just remember that using custom steps in Workflow Manager doesn’t necessarily equate to writing custom code!
Geodatabase Toolset (GDBT) for ArcCatalog – Now available for 10.0!
I’m pleased to announce that the Geodatabase Toolset (GDBT) for ArcCatalog is now available for 10.0.
You can download it RIGHT HERE!!
What a great month for pleasing announcements!
The GDBT is a popular, unsupported extension to ArcGIS Desktop. It provides a collection of tools that you can use to troubleshoot, monitor, and investigate ArcSDE (enterprise) geodatabases. The GDBT works with geodatabases stored on SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, DB2, or PostgreSQL databases. It fits neatly inside all Hoel Endorsed carry-on baggage and provides a wide variety of information including: Continue reading
Whiteboard of the Month (March) – The Versioning Story
This morning, Brent and I hashed out a high level versioning story on my whiteboard. We love our whiteboards here on the gdb team. We’re working on a book that’ll be out by the UC and wanted to get a good overview of the versioning chapter before we re-wrote the beast. Using the whiteboard turned out to be a good little exercise, allowing us to view the chapter story and layout as a whole.
As our morning coffee kicked in we realized that this would make a decent blog post, and one step further, a good series of posts: The Whiteboard of the Month.
It makes for a nice, informal look into what we are working on and gives us a way to share ideas and topics straight from the horse’s…eyes…sort of thing. So in months to come we will peruse the whiteboards in the halls of the geodatabase development team looking for valuable content / amateur artwork to share.
Enjoy.
- Jonathan
Versioning 101
Derek Law has written a fairly comprehensive overview of geodatabase versioning in an ArcUser article called Versioning 101. The article talks about the key concepts in versioning such as: creating versions, version workflows, the reconcile and post processes, version states, and the compress process.
There are also several handy links at the bottom of the article to round out your versioning knowledge.
Enjoy.
Geodatabase Toolset for ArcCatalog – Free Download
The Geodatabase Toolset (GDBT) for ArcCatalog is now available for 9.3 and 9.3.1. Download the toolset for free off of the ESRI downloads page.
The GDBT is an unsupported extension to ArcGIS Desktop which provides a collection of tools that you can use to troubleshoot, monitor, and investigate ArcSDE geodatabases.The GDBT works with geodatabases stored on SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, DB2, or PostgreSQL databases. It provides a wide variety of information including:
- The total number of rows in the add and delete tables
- Users connected to the geodatabase and locked schemas
- A graphic of the state tree lineage
- Detailed information of a features class spatial index
- Parent-child relationships between versions for version management
- Table and Index Statistics for geodatabase stored in an Oracle database
After you download and install the GDBT you can access a help file to learn more about the toolset. It can be found in Start > All Programs > Geodatabase Toolset > Geodatabase Toolset User Guide.
There is also a support forum available for interacting with other GDBT users.
Note: The GDBT is an “unsupported” extension so ESRI Technical Support is not available for the toolset.
Geodatabase Presentations from the 2009 Dev Summit
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 from our presentations to post up here on the blog. Click on the thumbnails below to view PDFs of the various presentations.
List of Useful Developer Samples
Last week I was in Palm Desert at the annual EGUG conference. While sitting in on a presentation I noticed that for a lot of the questions being asked, users were being directed to developer samples found online. I realized that while these samples are readily available, it was clear that not everyone knew about them or where to get them.
So I talked to Larry Young, who had moderated the session, and he put together the following list of developer samples that could prove helpful:
- One to many labels – label features based on attributes in a one to many relationship (i.e., multiple stacked labels per feature)
- Valence display – customer renderer to display the number of edges connected to a junction
- Batch snapping – snaps all selected features based on the current snapping environment
- Jumper extension – automatically creates a half circle in a line feature when it crosses another line feature in the same class
- Rotate symbol – rotates a point feature symbol based on the orientation of the line the symbol is snapped to
- Delete junctions with edge – deletes orphan junctions that are not connected to anything when an edge feature is deleted
- Merge network features – merges selected edge features
- Domain sort – sorts the current domain
- Manage versions – gives tree/hierarchal view of versions
- Next upstream device trace task – custom trace task to find next upstream junction from a specified class
- Find domain references – find places where a domain is currently being used
- Trace results window – allows results from multiple traces to be stored, displayed, and converted to a selection set
- Loop Construct – sketch tool used to construct a loop around a broken pipe segment
- Flow by digitized direction – sets the flow direction of a geometric network based on digitized direction of edge features
- Flow direction tool – sets the flow direction of individual network elements
- Geodatabase designer – arccatalog toolset for export/import gdb schema. Includes capabilities to copy domains, etc.
Do the new reconcile options work against older releases of ArcSDE geodatabases?
This was a question I got from a friend in tech support the other day and it’s a pretty good one. Short answer is yes, here’s why:
At 9.2 we added a number of different reconcile options offering users more flexibility when reconciling versions in an ArcSDE geodatabase. For those reading this that are wondering what a reconcile is or how versioning works I would suggest reading the Understanding Version section in the ArcGIS desktop web help. As the graphic below shows, at ArcGIS 9.2 we augmented the reconcile dialog to give users a choice of how conflicts are defined and resolved.
At ArcGIS 9.2 you can now determine how a conflict is defined either by object or by attribute. Also provided at 9.2 is the ability to specify how conflicts encountered during a reconcile are resolved. Conflicts can be resolved in one of two ways either in favor of the version you are reconciling with (Target Version) or in favor of the version that is being reconciled (Edit Version).
The important part here is all the logic for these options resides in the connecting application and not in the ArcSDE geodatabase. What this means for you is that if these options are available (i.e. you are connecting through ArcGIS 9.2 or a more recent release) you can use these options during a reconcile even if you are connected to a ArcSDE geodatabase that has not been upgraded to a recent release.
As a side note, the same also applies for the merge geometries functionality we added at 9.3.
9.3 Webhelp now publically available
The 9.3 Web help is now publically available since the login requirement was lifted yesterday. The web help is a great resource for up to date information. Even after the product is released the web help gets updated weekly with content and corrections.
Check out the What’s new in 9.3 section to see what new functionality 9.3 has to offer.
As for geodatabase related documentation, there are lots of new topics and content, such as:
Merge geometries
Using the Version Changes command
Mosaicking raster datasets
Color correcting using raster data
Raster Clip geoprocessing tool
ArcSDE connection syntax
Compatibility between clients and geodatabases
Inside a geodatabase in PostgreSQL
The Resource Centers will also be publically available soon, we’ll keep you posted on those.
