Is it possible to have attachments stored in Blob storage container?

phess_luckstone

Our organization is looking for a way store videos as attachments on a feature service.  I proposed the idea of using field maps to do this however one of the limitations is the size of the videos, I know when enabling attachments on an SDE database that it stores the file somewhere on the base install.  Is there a way to tell the database or the feature service to store the files in a blob storage account or change where the attachments are saved all together? 

ChristopherCounsell

No, not at this time. Attachments are stored as blob in a related table in the same location as the features. The editing mechanisms in ArcGIS allow you to add attachments to that table 

People have asked for this in the past but it doesn't look like anyone has submitted an idea for it. Would be a good one if you want to create it:

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-enterprise-questions/support-cloud-storage-s3-azure-for-attachments/td-p/1020545

Otherwise you need to design a method for:

• Uploading the attachment to the external site
• Maintain the connection between the feature and the attachment

How this is done will vary. It might mean the user uploads the video to the external site, but it's to a folder with the feature ID on it. Or you might use python to backup old photos and remove them as attachments.

The connection between feature and attachment could be maintained through a url value in a field, or dynamically constructed via a popup.

I've seen these workflows adopted for large volumes of historical photos. I'm not aware of a clean method for ongoing video capture.