topic Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling in Data Management Questions

"Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

DanNarsavage — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:13:50 GMT

Our shop of 6 editors on a versioned SDE instance on a SQL Server 2005 database has been increasingly running into times when reconciling fails and getting a "null Z values/empty geometry" error message (screen shot attached). Up until today, it's happened on small edits so it's been easier to just delete the version and redo the edit than to try and track down the problem. But now I've run a process that took all weekend and come back to find this error when I tried to reconcile the version containing the results.

It occurred to me recently that I believe that this started happening only after we put our parcel fabric into production in this same geodatabase. Since I think the fabric is the only feature class that we have that's Z-aware, this makes some sense. Anyone else have any experience with this? Regardless of the cause, is there a way to fix this?

Thanks,
Dan

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JasonCamerano — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:33:37 GMT

We are looking into this issue.

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

DanNarsavage — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:17:42 GMT

Any resolution yet, Jason? Is there a bug tracking number or something that I can follow? Thanks.

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JasonCamerano — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:23:36 GMT

Sorry for the delayed response.
Would you happen to have any data that we can use to reproduce this?
We have not been able to reproduce this in house. Is this still happening frequently?

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

DanNarsavage — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:37:44 GMT

Thanks Jason. It's still happening, but perhaps with slightly lower frequency. More thorough compresses (but still almost never all the way back to state 0) performed more often have seemed to make things slightly better.

Since my last post, we've discovered that one editor (out of six) has never once encountered the "z value" error while reconciling. The rest of us, though, all seem to encounter it at the same times (very roughly once per week). Interestingly, I wrote some ArcObjects code in '07 or '08 that automated some of the version management for our users, and the one unaffected user has never used these tools while the rest of us have. But if my code is the problem then why only after three problem-free years, and why only sometimes? I'm not afraid to blame my less-than-stellar .NET skills for this, but there's gotta be another contributing factor somewhere . . .

I can ship you whatever you want, so sure you can have some data. But since we're not sure what's causing the problems (at least no one on my end is), would this have to be a copy of our entire SDE database? That won't fit in an email. 🙂

Thanks,
Dan

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JasonCamerano — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:22:00 GMT

Maybe a backup of the GDB might work. What are you running on? SQL Server?

Here are the instructions to load files on to our FTP site if you want to use that. However, this site isn't secure so if there is anything sensitive I wouldn't recommend loading it:

External users who need to FTP a file to Esri should be instructed to login to ftp://ftp.esri.com/ as " anonymous " using their e-mail address as the password and to navigate to the /pub/incoming directory. They can then put files in that directory.

The file will be deleted in 2 business days.

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

DanNarsavage — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:14:43 GMT

Okay, we put a SQL backup of our production SDE instance out on your FTP server as you suggested. Thanks Jason!

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JasonCamerano — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:08:43 GMT

Hey Dan,

What directory is the Backup in. It might have been removed already...
If you re-upload it send me an email: jcamerano@esri.com and I will pull it immediately.

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JohnFell — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:53:05 GMT

I am also unable to reconcile and post a total of 8 versions to our 10.0 SP2 GDB. I had not considered null geometries being the culprit. We have a total of 587598 lines with a shape.len value = 0. What was the result from the GDB backup Dan and Jason?

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

DanNarsavage — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:52:25 GMT

Great question, John. I wish I could answer it. We're in the process right now of testing whether or not the culprit for us is custom .NET ArcObjects code that I've written. That's all been removed from all users' machines and it seems like we're experiencing less problems (not NO problems, but far less). Unfortunately, this test coincides with a decrease in the number of edits being done as we just wrapped up a big project, so the decrease in errors could be explained by the decrease in edits as easily as by my suboptimal (to say the least) ArcObjects code. We never successfully got a backup to Jason, since the ESRI FTP site blows things away two days after they're put there, and it takes a good portion of that time just to upload the whole thing.

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JohnFell — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:32:54 GMT

Dan,

Thanks for the response. We are having similiar issues with getting a GDB backup to tech support. Tell me how you address the issues you are having. Do you delete the null features and then are able to reconcile and post without issues? How do you find the problems you are having? Is there an automated process you have found that can eliminate the errors? Thanks again for your help!

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

DanNarsavage — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:22:42 GMT

Nothing has seemed to allow us to reconcile a version once we get errors of this type. We've always had to delete the version (abandoning all the edits therein) and redo our work. The silver lining to that cloud is that it's conditioned all our editors to be diligent about reconciling/posting.

We have one editor in particular who gets stuff that truly doesn't make any sense--she has no permissions to edit our parcel fabric, yet she gets errors regarding that parcel fabric. John, do you have a parcel fabric in the SDE instance where you're getting your reconcile errors?

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JohnFell — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:59:54 GMT

Dan,

We are using a parcel fabric in SDE. It is a pilot test right now. I just spoke with one of the developers and it appears that what we thought was a null geometry was really just a radial line. These have a shape.len = 0 and a category = 4. Would be nice to hear about how you guys are doing on using the fabric. We are trying to translate our workflows now. Have any tips? Thanks.

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

DanNarsavage — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:52:14 GMT

We jumped on board the parcel fabric bus shortly after ESRI started driving it. Our early entry got us some personal attention from ESRI, but it also got us involved in the early attempts to import "legacy" data into a fabric. Our import lacked a lot, and we're still paying some price for that--a lot of bad parcel dimensions & geometries got imported or created. We could have re-imported later, but we figured that would have been more painful than dealing with the stuff we had. Those bad dimensions hide undetected until one of those parcels gets taken into a job, then when the job is finished & parcels are re-joined, ArcMap tries to draw the parcel based on those wacky dimensions and all hell breaks loose, cartographically speaking. I think the import has improved significantly since those days "way back" in 2008, so this may not be an issue for you. Another issue that we've had is that we haven't yet been able to run a LSA successfully on our data. I can create a fabric & make some simple parcels, then run an LSA on them successfully. But even after double- & triple- & quadruple-checking all dimensions in several neighborhoods in our production data to make sure we had all record dimensions, LSAs failed in those neighborhoods regardless of what kinds of tolerances I used. It was probably a year ago that I last attempted an LSA. Maybe our fabric's hosed up as a result of those import issues, maybe the LSA logic needed tweaking, maybe I was doing something wrong, and definitely our control sucks right out the door in a couple areas. I have a feeling that, despite the ability for the fabric to hold dimensions measured in the 1890s, the fabric was designed with the assumption that everything in our parcel map was surveyed since 1985. Regardless of the reasons for the LSAs not working, I got tired of ramming my head into a wall and I gave up & devoted my efforts to things that had a chance of succeeding.

Bottom line: the fabric works well enough for us to take care of day-to-day parcel maintenance (splits, combinations, subdivisions) and our editors are pretty self-sufficient. But lots of the swanky things that made me jump at the fabric (mostly LSAs) haven't come to fruition for us yet, and the less time I spend talking about it the less money I spend on gin.

PS. Expect a thank you card from the folks at the Tanqueray distillery.

Re: "Null z value/empty geometry" error when reconciling

JamesM1 — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:14:55 GMT

Upgrade the Parcel Fabric and disable z values in the environments settings of the upgrade tool.

Upgrade Parcel Fabric: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesk...0009000000.htm