CopyFeatures tool runs 10 times slower in a Python script than from ArcToolbox

Question

Dismayed by how long a Python script I've developed was taking to copy features to a shapefile, I decided to do some testing. When run from ArcToolbox, the Copy Features (management) tool takes about 12 minutes to copy a large point feature class from SDE to a local shapefile. I wrote a small test script that does the exact same thing, using CopyFeatures_management to copy the same SDE feature class to a local shapefile, and it took over 2 hours!

What could possibly explain this discrepancy? I've seen a few mentions of similar problems with the CopyFeatures tool on the old forums but no real explanation or solution.

LoganPugh · Answer

This appears to be fixed for me at ArcGIS 10 SP2. Are you using SP2 as well?

Two workarounds were mentioned:* Use Feature Class to Feature Class instead of Copy Features (no improvement, at the time)
* Call a model that uses CopyFeatures from the Python script (IIRC this was fast but not very practical).

You might check on the status of the following Nimbus IDs that were mentioned:
#NIM041113  The Python script to export shapefile from ArcSDE is extremely slow
#NIM043129  Performance of Feature Class to Shapefile when used in Python is slow

LouJacoby · Answer

Were you able to resolve what was causing the problem?  I am having a similar issue in v10, trying to use CopyFeatures from a layer file to an SDE feature class.  Running it in model builder it takes 14 minutes, but when I export that to a python script it takes 4.5 hours.  Thanks.

LoganPugh · Answer

Thanks for looking into it. I do not think it's an SDE problem because the same issue occurs on large file geodatabase feature classes as well. I will do some more testing on different sizes/types of feature classes and in the meantime will submit a bug report through our usual channel.