Dear People, i have a task to create a "Geo-Database" with ArcGis (Our license : Advanced) for our Soil-Data, which is stored on our Server. The Data comes from various sources, webpages, selfmade, has for example GRID files, Shapefiles, RST files. It is a bit unorganized and well distributed on the server (many folders, subfolders). There are three different types of Geodatabases, i am asking myself what we were using until now. We actually just imported the mapfiles into arcgis and worked on them (most times 1 person a time) then saved the results to new files somewhere near to the actual files. The result on the server looks somewhat like this : folder name : "soil_map" , subfolders like "info" and so on, files which are called ".adf" (which turns out to be the equivalent of GRID if you open it in ARCGIS). i suppose thats what the ARGIS HELP site calls "Personal-Geodatabase", which is not recommended to use at all. What my task is : Set up a Database (determine if it is necessary ??) But there are two types to think about : ArcSDE-Geodatabase // File-Geodatabase My Ideas about File-Geodatabase : I think it is easier to set up and can be done with ArcCatalog, which will support multi-user and a faster processing speed of the files??? We are not working with too many people on the same data at all, lets say max. 3 persons at a time. The data we are working with are not that huge, we are talking about <10 GB per file (mean), mainly stored in TIFF images, Shapefiles, .rst, Rasterfiles etc. My Ideas about the ArcSDE-Geodatabase : Harder to set up, need to install ARCSDE to the server, which is probably running on linux, what so ever, i dont think it is necessary to implement this kind of database, but im not sure, because I dont know what kind of data size will occur in future and how many users will use it. Anyways, what i kindly ask You is : Is based on the information i gave, PROBABLY a File-Geodatabase a good enough solution to provide a small "mulit use" component as well as a faster processing speed, or is it smarter to set up the "ARCSDE-Geodatabase" in general? I know probably there is no simple answer to this but i would be thankful if someone could point the finger in a direction to show me whats my next step of thinking is. Thank you, hwhero
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