Relational Data Store vs Spatiotemporal Big Data Store when working with GeoAnalytics Server

[DalindaDamm]

I am trying to understand how the Relational Data Store and the Spatiotemporal Data Store compare when working with GeoAnalytics. The documentation (and my experience poking at things) suggests that both support inputs and outputs for geoprocessing tasks carried out by the GeoAnalytics Server. Unfortunately, I cannot find any documentation discussing the advantages of using one over the other when using the GeoAnalytics Server tools. Can anyone either point me to appropriate documentation I might have missed, or elaborate on cases where one is better to use than the other in this context?

Additionally, for a more general understanding of these two data stores, are there any other differences between them other than the fact that the Spatiotemporal Big Data Store is specifically for use with ArcGIS GeoEvent Server?

[SarahAmbrose · Accepted solution]

Hi Dalinda Damm‌,

By default, GeoAnalytics uses the spatitoemporal data store as an output, because of its ability to scale out to multiple machines and handle large datasets. There is currently some documentation on when you might want to use the relational data store in the tool hover help. 

GeoAnalytic results are stored in an ArcGIS Data Store and exposed as a feature layer in Portal for ArcGIS. In most cases, results should be stored in a spatiotemporal data store. This is the default. The following are reasons why you may want to store results in a relational data store:

• To use your results in portal-to-portal collaboration
• To enable sync capabilities with your results

You should not use a relational data store if you expect your GeoAnalytics results to increase and want to take advantage of the spatiotemporal big data store's capabilities to handle large amounts of data.

At 10.6.1 (releasing soon), we've also added some documentation here: Feature layers—Portal for ArcGIS | ArcGIS Enterprise . You won't be able to see it yet, but once 10.6.1 documentation goes live with the 10.6.1 release, there will be a table outlining the differences between feature layers in relational and spatiotemporal data stores.  

I'm hoping that new documentation helps - we wanted it just for this purpose

Sarah

Product Engineer, GeoAnalytics

[DalindaDamm]

Sarah Ambrose‌,

We have been struggling to successful use the 'Copy to Data Store' tool to move data from a local machine up to the STDS. We were recently told by an Esri Tech Support member that this type of workflow was not what the STDS was meant for. Specifically, it was suggested that using non-GeoEvent data as an input from the STDS for a GeoAnalytics tool was not what it was meant to do. Honestly, this doesn't make sense to our team, nor does that seem to be reflected in the available documentation, and we would like some further clarification from you if possible.

Thanks!

Dalinda

[SarahAmbrose]

Hi Dalinda Damm‌,

Thanks for the update. Can you please send me the support case number to sambrose at esri.com? I'd like to check it out, and chat with the analyst to understand their interpretation. Once I do that I'll update this to make sure we have an "official" answer here.

Thank you!

Sarah

Product Engineer, GeoAnalytics

[DalindaDamm]

Thanks Sarah Ambrose‌!