Managing Data Using .gdb, how to do it?

Question

Hello,

I have a bunch of files that are poorly organized, some are baked into previous/old projects, some live in .gdb, some are shapefiles that are organized to different folders. I am working on an overhaul of our data management, to restart from a more organized place. I need to preserve the old data locations to not disrupt file paths for my old projects, which I am saving for the time being until everything is updated. I have a few questions if anyone can provide advice:

1- I understand that each new project creates a default .gdb for the project. That is fine with me, as long as none of the feature classes/data from the project autosaves in there. I want the project to pull from data that is preserved as MASTER copies. I want to avoid the problem of data being only accessible inside one project. If a project is deleted, does the default .gdb get deleted too?

2- Are .gdp tied to a specific project? Is it poor data management to have a new project pull from an existing .gdb?

I had originally thought I should create new MASTER versions (copied from the originals) of all the data, save them to organized folders within file explorer, and then pull those into each new project. However, it seems like there are a lot more tools that make using .gdb easier long term. Can I achieve the same result of saving a MASTER version of the data to a geodatabase that is standalone (not connected to a specific project)? My problem with this is that data saved to .gdb do not come up when searching within Microsoft File Explorer, which means if I am looking for the data in the future, I would have to know which specific .gdb to open. Is there a workaround to locating files within different .gdb?

Thank you for any input/help you may have. Most of my data is simple feature classes/feature datasets that contain point/line/polygon information.

-> Editing to add: Can I also include a readme file in the .gdb to have information for others to read? How would i save that to the .gdp?

BrianMcKeon · Answer

SQL Server is poorly supported by ESRI, impossible to group manage with Windows Authentication to the db. The ESRI solution of make the non DBO users sysadmin role is absolutely insane. The editing users get System Admin for Sql Server while the geodatabase owner is only database owner role??? Completely breaks everything if using common databases servers, where users can break other non-related databases just to access the tables as DBO for the ESRI stuff. If they would let us pick the schema instead of the insanity of forcing it based on domain\login would make things a lot more logical with Sql Server, else your stuck using sql logins for everything, and all the fun security issues that presents for teams working on common datasets. Even if they would check role membership and accept dbo roled users as dbo instead of domain\login schema that would be a step in the right direction, but no make them system administrators of the sql server, absolute insanity.

Nick_Creedon · Answer

This is a specific task I have not had to accomplish yet.

I did some quick research, and this might be the solution and or get you close.

* Create the README File: Write your README content in a text file (e.g., README.txt).

* Add the README to the Geodatabase:

Using ArcGIS Pro:

* Open ArcGIS Pro and connect to your File Geodatabase.
* Right-click on the geodatabase in the Catalog pane and select New > Table.
* Create a new table with fields to store the README content (e.g., a field for the title and another for the content).
* Add a new record to this table and paste your README content into the appropriate fields.

Hopefully this helps!

GIS_CityofBerwyn · Answer

Thank you Nick. This is very helpful moving forward. Curious if you had any insight on my last question, about the readme file? I haven't found a way to input a readme file onto the .gdb but I think that would be helpful in the future.

Thanks again for the help!