ArcGIS Data Store Under the Hood

[JimO_Leary3]

What is ArcGIS Data Store under the hood? Sql Server Express? Sqlite? Something proprietary?

Thanks

[juliaharrell2]

Does anyone know if the geometry features in an ArcGIS Data Store is PosgreSQL ST_GEOMETRY or PostGIS GEOMETRY?  And whether or not there's any way to connect to and manipulate/query it directly from some other type GIS Client (perhaps QGIS) that is not dependent on ArcObjects/SDE Interface to understand either of these types of spatial data?

[DerekLaw]

Hi Julia,

Geometry features in the ArcGIS Data Store are stored in the ST_GEOMETRY spatial type. And while it is technically possible to connect to and query this data with a non-ArcGIS client app, it is not supported.

Hope this helps,

[GISMountains]

Hi Derek,

Is there any informartion how to connect to the datastore?

Connect with pgadmin to the postgres? Connectionstring?

see also this question:

Publish Mapservice - Where are the data? 

Cheers

[DerekLaw]

Hi GIS Mountains,

> Is there any information how to connect to the datastore? Connect with pgadmin to the postgres? Connectionstring?

No, we don't provide this type of information, because it is NOT a supported workflow. While it is technically possible for you to directly connect to the ArcGIS Data Store using both ArcCatalog/ArcMap and pgadmin - we don't recommend that you do this. The ArcGIS Data Store was designed and meant to be accessed internally by the ArcGIS software only.

> see also this question: Publish Mapservice - Where are the data? 

It looks like 2 Esri staff folks are already addressing this thread. Not sure what you need from me.

Hope this helps,

[JohnDye]

GIS Mountains,

What exactly are you trying to accomplish by direct-connecting to the Datastore? There are likely much better alternatives to do whatever it is that you want which would not put the integrity of the Datastore at risk. Direct Connecting to and tinkering with the Datastore is almost always a very bad idea.

[ElijahRobison]

You're probably no longer messing with this, but if you are still trying to connect to Portal's db under the hood, see my answer below: https://community.esri.com/thread/160435#comment-772773 

It's basically create an SSH tunnel to port 7654, db name = gwdb, user/pass= your portal admin user.

I agree with the sentiment that you should steer clear of, or at least be careful, inserting/editing data in this instance, but I disagree that merely connecting to it and poking around will cause any damage. I'm trying to troubleshoot my Portal setup and one of the ideas I had was to expand the logging on this db instance to see if it is throwing any helpful errors or warnings. And I will remain unconvinced by anyone who says troubleshooting a config problem by expanding the logging on a db or looking through its contents puts anything at risk.

[JonathanQuinn]

I definitely agree that increasing the log level to troubleshoot issues is best practice in general, but any of the contents that would require viewing would be exposed through supported APIs, such as the Portaladmin API or Sharing API. Even if something was amiss, updating it directly would not be supported and any updates should be done through the API's mentioned above. In the case of DB issues with Portal or Data Store, I don't think there's much benefit in accessing the DB directly.

[Mike_Team_]

Here's an example of a use case of why one would want to access the DataStore directly. I would like to generate some automated reports on the data in the data store using other programs that can access a Postgres DB. Not trying to insert, delete, or update any records. Otherwise, is there a suggestion on how I can create real-time reporting or exporting of data from the data store?

Thanks!

[PayneRingling]

You ever come up with a solution for this?

[ElijahRobison]

mike team‌ and Payne Ringling‌....I'm not sure if you guys are still messing with this, or if this is even the same thing, but on my setup, I can access Portal's PostGRESql db if I create an SSH connection with Putty, tunneling port 7654 between the host and localhost, then creating a connection with pgAdmin III (or whatever client you want) to a database named "gwdb" with my Portal admin username and password.

If you want to access the postgresql.conf or the pg_hba.conf, etc., on my CentOS setup, they are located at:

/home/[ags]/arcgis/portal/usr/arcgisportal/db

..where [ags] was the user account you used to install ArcGIS and/or related add-ons. If you're on Windows, it stands to reason that the filepath is similar from the ArcGIS install directory forward, and I would expect the db connection criteria (port, dbname, user/pass) to be identical.

I hope this helps you guys. I'm having trouble just getting the webadaptor to register with portal and found this thread, and wanted to share this info in case it might benefit someone.