Control schema locking behavior in ArcGIS Pro

Question

Is there a way to load a FGDB feature class into an ArcGIS Pro map as read-only with no schema-locking?

I would like to achieve the following scenario:

* Load a feature class from a file geodatabase as read-only into an ArcGIS Pro map. The point being it will not establish a schema lock, but I can view the data.

The context is - when developing Python scripts with arcpy, I will typically have a Pro project set up to inspect the results and data as I run and debug the scripts.

Because Pro locks the schemas when the map is loaded... I have to shut down Pro to free the lock, run my script, wait for it to complete, open Pro, and then inspect results. During the development process I may have to do this over 100 times.

With an enterprise GDB I can use a Query Layer to establish a read-only layer, however during development our best practice is to use localized FGDBs until the script is debugged and the data has been validated.

Am I missing something? Does anyone have a workaround for this? Feature Request?

Robert LeClair · Answer

There is a Compress File Geodatabase GP tool that sets the GDB, FC and/or FDS to "read-only"  Might be worth an experiment.

eMosby · Answer

Mainly because I prefer my IDE, but also we require version control, multiple devs.

eMosby · Answer

Thanks Bud, those are good suggestions I will have to test out. At first glance an FGDB database view may be preferable because I think it would be agnostic of schema changes.