topic Re: Identify Unused Versions in Data Management Questions

Identify Unused Versions

DavidAglietti — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 21:22:32 GMT

Hello,
Does anyone know of a way to identify versions that are unused, perhaps by checking to see how long ago edits were made to a particular version. I'm asking because I have many versions that were created for individual users and I suspect that lots of them were never used. I'd like to get rid of the extras without having to delete every version if possible.
Thank you,
Ryan

Re: Identify Unused Versions

JakeSkinner — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 10:15:44 GMT

Hi David,

You can check when a version was last modified by right-clicking on the geodatabase connection > Administration > Administer Geodatabase > Versions tab.

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Re: Identify Unused Versions

VinceAngelo — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 16:31:54 GMT

It's really, really important to understand that there is no such thing as an
"unused version". Versions, by themselves, are not very important -- all they do
is provide a name to a state. But applying that name to a state other than 0
will prevent the state tree from being pruned -- just having a version means the
state is in use. ArcGIS uses the list of versions to determine how to compress
the state tree. Any version has the potential to prevent compression, not just
old ones (though older versions are more likely to point to older states).

The geodatabase administrator needs to actively monitor the state tree, to make
sure optimal compression is occurring on a regular basis. It's unlikely there could
be a fully automated process to review whether versions are "stale" (and should be
deleted) without a significant risk of deleting versions which are important.

- V