Archiving ID's

[AndrewRudin]

One issue with Archiving that prevents us from using it is the fact you are required to use the ObjectID field to store the relation between the main feature class and the history table,and how do you maintain the archive table if you need to delete the feature class temporarily and reload it for major schema changes.  If I have to export all my data from SDE and completely rebuild the schema from a UML or ArcGIS Diagrammer, when I reload all the archiving kept in the history table after I disable archiving will be broken. 

Am I missing something?  I do not see a place to setup which field the archive uses to store the object in the table being stored.

Just to reiterate, the workflow would be:

-Begin with versioned/archived layer on SDE:

-Disable archiving, choose option to keep archive
-Export data from feature class to File Geodatabase or XML Recordset temporarily
-Delete feature class
-Load new feature class schema into SDE from xml
-Reload data into SDE from FGDB or XML Recordset
-Version
-Re-enable archiving

Now that JTX is moving to this as the sole option for storing edit transactions, this is going to be a problem if we decide to make changes to our 20+ layer utility network dataset

[RussellBrennan]

Hi RudinA,

There is currently an enhancement request in our system to implement this functionality:
NIM050307 - Option to attach the old archive table (_h) back to the original feature class on re-enabling archiving.

After disabling archiving on a feature class it is not possible to then enable archiving and still have the original archive class be associated with the feature class. Each time archiving is enabled a new archive class is created. This is currently a known limitation in the software and is not something that will be updated in ArcGIS 10.

[GlenColgate1]

What is the status of NIM050307 - Option to attach the old archive table (_h) back to the original feature class on re-enabling archiving?

Almost two years later, and this is still a significant problem in the archiving toolset. Everytime a change is made to a data table we essentially lose any benefit of having archiving enabled in the first place.

[JenniferBorlick]

I've been looking at this as we are thinking about implementing archiving to track changes.
I believe this help topic:
http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Disabling_archiving/00270000004s000000...
and this thread:
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/53530-Re-enabling-Archiving

might provide you some answers.
Good luck!
Jennifer