All,
One of the great things about running a geo-processing tool is that it inserts information about the tool run on the dataset into the Geoprocessing history section of the metadata. This is incredibly useful for working out how a dataset was created, especially if the user who created the dataset provided no metadata (which in my experience is just about every major organisation on the planet).
Another great thing about the modern ArcGIS is the in_memory workspace, this is great for storing temporary data without clogging up the hard drive and when you close ArcMap it all simply vanishes, love it!
But...
A FeatureClass stored in the in_memory workspace will not store any subsequent geoprocessing history. I may create a temporary dataset do some extra processing on it using geo-processing tools and then decide that it is indeed worth keeping and save out to a permanent location, but none of the geo-processing history is recorded.
It would be an extremely useful improvement to an in_memory dataset to store the metadata. It would ensure a proper "paper trail" exists for a dataset.
