View Geometry in Tabular to Feature Class FGDB Join

GreggRoemhildt1 — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 20:50:08 GMT

Short Version: Join a non-spatial table to a feature class, and the records are mapped by the feature-classes geometry. Currently, the geometry isn't available when you join a table to a feature class.

Details:

I've been trying to figure out why, in ArcGIS Desktop is it not possible to join data (using the common Add Join tool) join a generic table to a generic feature class to a generic point layer and view the geometry. This situation is probably fairly common where you might have a point or line feature class and several inspections tied to each point in a tabular format. What if you want to view the point locations of each inspection, or a subset of inspections? Lets say you want to view the structures with an inspection rating of less than 3? If the inspections table is a simple tabular dataset, you'll need to do something like add xy coordinates, to the feature class, join the tables, then generate a point file using from xy coordinates..etc. It would be much nicer to just join it to its related feature class and filter/view the geometries.

Let me back up, I know this is possible to do with RDBMS by creating a new view, etc. But why not file geodatabases?

It kind of defeats the purpose of having a One to Many relationship with a non-spatial data type, like inspections for example.

I've been learning more about spatial databases like PostGIS, and others and it seems that in those databases, the geometry is just a column, like any other and when you join a non spatial table to a spatial table you can select and view that geometry that is associated with the spatial table.

It seems like this should be a feature implemented in any spatial database including file geodatabases, not just in an RDBMS.

Cheers.

idea View Geometry in Tabular to Feature Class FGDB Join in Data Management Ideas

View Geometry in Tabular to Feature Class FGDB Join