Enterprise vs FileGDB for Mapservices

Question

Hi,

I know there are various bits and pieces about on this but I wondered if anyone had any actual hands-on experience?

We currently host many mapservices powered by an Enterprise Geodatabase against a 10.0 Server. I  have started running services powered by a local FGDB on a test (pre-upgrade) 10.1 server and the performance seems really good. From the disparate info I have read on this, many people seem to suggest there is nothing faster than a local FGDB?

Can anyone offer any advice?

Web Editing will (as I think it has too) work against the Enterprise Geodatabase which will remain the master data source.

Are there any potential security issues with using a FGDB over a RDBMS?

Thanks in advance for any help or direction
Tony

TonyCollins · Answer

What do yo mean with "security issues"?

File geodatabases are just a bunch of (binary) files stored on a drive. They differ in this in no way of a set of normal HTML files representing a basic website, or the individual files making up an ESRI Shapefile.

There is no inherent security mechanism in the file geodatabase itself, like database authentication. If access to the FGDB needs to be restricted, than you need to use the normal web authentication methods to restrict access to the website hosting it (password protected HTTPS site?).

In a sense, file geodatabases may be a "more" secure method of hosting the data, as there is no RDBMS system to be potentially compromised and made wrong use of.

Thanks for your reply. I've been through the whole of Chrome's history trying to find the thread where someone mentioned risking things using a 'File Database' but come up blank. Perhaps I found it at home!

Anyway, that sounds fine to me. The plan is simply going to be read-only FGDB files for all mapservices. As we want the web stuff speedy and simple to manage!

MarcoBoeringa · Answer

Are there any potential security issues with using a FGDB over a RDBMS?

What do yo mean with "security issues"?

File geodatabases are just a bunch of (binary) files stored on a drive. They differ in this in no way of a set of normal HTML files representing a basic website, or the individual files making up an ESRI Shapefile.

There is no inherent security mechanism in the file geodatabase itself, like database authentication. If access to the FGDB needs to be restricted, than you need to use the normal web authentication methods to restrict access to the website hosting it (password protected HTTPS site?).

In a sense, file geodatabases may be a "more" secure method of hosting the data, as there is no RDBMS system to be potentially compromised and made wrong use of.