Branch Versioning - Get changes in Default version before reconciling

Question

There is a requirement to find the changes posted to default in GIS daily and send the changes to a Work Management System. We are working with Utility Network and using ArcGIS Pro 3.3.7. The UN is branch versioned and we are planning to write a python code to achieve this. We also planned to create a version under Default, find the difference between the Default and the new branch version, send the differences to WMS.

The version changes API only provides the changes in the branch version. Is there a way I can identify what has been changed in the Default (posted from other versions)?

ManojGnanaseelan · Answer

Thanks @VenkataKondepati and @RobertKrisher for taking time to answer my question. I agree that the idea of Venkata was right, but as Robert rightly pointed it is better to use the ArcGIS API for Python which I was expecting also. To summarize, the differences method in the version class in ArcGIS API for Python can be used to achieve the required output. They key is to get the SDE.Default version and pass the moment (this is basically to moment) and from_moment parameter.

VenkataKondepati · Answer

Hi @RobertKrisher,

Good catch. Thanks for the clarification.

RobertKrisher · Answer

@VenkataKondepati has the right idea. You can retrieve the differences directly from the default version for any two arbitrary moments in time. This ability was added in 10.9 when we introduced the fromMoment parameter (Differences | ArcGIS REST APIs | Esri Developer).

However, I can see a few problems with the code he generated:

It is using the wrong operation to calculate the differences. The operation should be differences (plural) not difference (singular).

The second problem is that you must always reference the global id of the version. You cannot use the name of the version in the URL. This means you'll need to query the version management service to get the global id of the default version and use that in your URL.

I'm not 100% sure about the way the moment is being calculated either.

In terms of writing your own code, while you can write raw HTTPS requests to do this, there is an API available for this via the ArcGIS API for Python: https://developers.arcgis.com/python/latest/api-reference/arcgis.features.managers.html#version