SDE - Database Design

gismoe

I need some tips how to get my data organized very well in a sde so that you don�??t loose track in hundreds of feature classes.

Yes it is possible to use Feature Datasets but somehow this is not enough. I have to divide thematically (energy supply, ground-contaminated land, terrain modelling, base map, historical monuments, aerial photos, and so on) and assign privileges.
Additionally there is a possible target to design Topology rules.

Until now we worked with PGDBs and we were able to group the data in PGDB and Feature Datasets. Like folders in a file system.

But how do you do this in the SDE?

VinceAngelo

Databases have an inherently "flat" organization. This is one of their strengths, since there
are significant performance benefits to not being able to "lose" a table in an arbitrary folder
organization. Esri honors this external design constraint with the ArcSDE interface -- there
is just one SE_table_list() function.

Therefore, you have three sources of control:
+ Database instance
+ Database user (schema)
+ Table name

Feature datasets should only be used to manage objects which will be edited togther
(even though it is common, there are serious penalties for using FDS as a simple folder).

Since Oracle doesn't have a "multi-database" paradigm, Esri engineered "schema geodatabases"
to isolate all the tables for a given user within an instance. Using this construct can also
mean more connections, since accesses to the different schemas all require their own
connections.

I generally use table owner to reflect the provider or geographic extent, then use underscores
to partition the name by theme (and I tack on the map scale and geometry class as suffixes):

C:\Temp>  sdelist -o table
 
ArcSDE 9.3 Table Listing Utility         Tue Sep 21 11:28:48 2010
------------------------------------------------------------------------
eval93.europe.admin1_100k_a
eval93.europe.cities_100k_p
eval93.europe.country_100k_a
eval93.europe.rail_100k_s
eval93.europe.railstations_100k_p
eval93.europe.roads_100k_s
eval93.usa.admin1_100k_a
eval93.usa.admin1_1m_a
eval93.usa.admin2_100k_a
eval93.usa.admin2_1m_a
eval93.usa.airport_100k_p
eval93.usa.cities_100k_p
eval93.usa.cities_1m_p
eval93.usa.hydro_100k_l
eval93.usa.hydro_1m_l
eval93.usa.rail_100k_l
eval93.usa.roads_100k_l
eval93.usa.roads_1m_l
eval93.usa.roads_500k_l
eval93.world.admin1_100k_a
eval93.world.cities_1m_p
eval93.world.country_100k_a
eval93.world.country_5m_a
eval93.world.gazateer_100k_p
eval93.world.nightlights_5km
eval93.world.wsi_earth99_4km
26 tables found
 

- V