Deleting an enterprise (SDE) GDB

[ErikBlake]

How do I go about permanently deleting an enterprise sde gdb. I know that you can right click and delete in ArcCatalog but that just deletes your connection to the gdb. But how do I permanently delete the gdb. 

[VinceAngelo]

What version of ArcGIS?  In which RDBMS?  How many data owners?  What storage types are used?

- V

[AnthonyGiles · Accepted solution]

It depends on what enterprise database it is. I use sql server and have to go into sql server management studio to delete the actual database once i have removed the connection in ArcCatalog.

[ErikBlake]

Anthony/Vince

Thanks guys. Yea I probably should have been a little more specific. It is sql and we are running 10.1

[AnthonyGiles]

Have a look at this microsoft help:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177419(v=sql.105).aspx

[ErikBlake]

Anthony

Thanks for the link. I went into sql server management studio and found the databases. Thanks.

[VinceAngelo]

If you want to delete anything short of the entire database you need to be careful to delete the SDE user in addition to any user tables using SDE-set rowids, versioning, archiving, and SDEBINARY geometry.  In Oracle you can corrupt the entire instance by dropping the SDE user before dropping all tables which use SDE.ST_GEOMETRY storage (or ST_RASTER, I imagine). SQL-Server is the only RDBMS that does not support SDE.ST_GEOMETRY, so it's the safest for this kind or removal.

[ErikBlake]

Vince

Thanks for the detailed response. The SDE gdb that I deleted was not in use by anybody or being used I created it but never put it to wide range use.