delete/append order of operation with relationships.

clt_cabq

Is there an order of operations requirement when updating a feature class and related table - such as, do you have to update a feature class first before the related table? I have a geodatabase (sql server backend) with a feature class and a related (1:M) table that I update once a month. I run (manually) a delete/append operation against both of these items after I've updated data in a staging database. I use truncate table to delete the existing rows in the gdb table. I always inspect the table to make sure all records match the source table, especially the field that is used to relate to the feature class. I've found that I can inspect the table and find all values in the related field have updated, but then after I run the delete/append on the feature class, it appears those related values in the table 'disappear' everytime. For instance I ran this update today and had 0 null values in the relate field before updating the feature class but afterwards there were about 96K out of 98K records with null values in the related field in the table. Typically I am running the truncate/append operation first, then the delete/append on the feature class, and if i redo the truncate/append process a second time, everything comes through with no issues.

MMBR

You should

1. truncate the related table

2. then truncate the featureclass

3. then reload the data

4. load the featureclass

5. load the related table

If the geodatabase relationship class 1:M is based on GUI values then nothing to worry.

If you are using ObjectID then you might need to preserve the original objectid value in the featureclass as a new field e.g orig_oid and preserve the related table foreign key value as a new field as well e.g orig_oid_fk, then you can repopulate the related table foreign key value with the new objectid of the featureclass using the original ObjectID values.

I hope this helps.