Add "Date Created" and "Date Modified" on ArcCatalog Content window

[WeiHan]

Currently, we have only "Name" and "Type" under the ArcCatalog Content window when you open a connection with ArcSDE Geodatabase. It will help a lot if we can add "Create Date" like the one under SQL server and a "Date Modified" field like the one under Windows Explorer.

[JodiNorris]

I can find the option to display a 'date modified' column in ArcCatalog under Customize --> ArcCatalog Options --> general --> Contents tab, though it seems flaky because I'm pretty sure that sometime viewing without modifiying data will change the modify date.


AFAIK The created date is still not an option and this would be very, very helpful.

[RussellGaulin1]

True dat, just looking at a feature class "modifies" it, that should not happen IMHO.  Also, turning the modified column on does not seem to get them to diplay in ArcCatalog anyway!  (Accessed over a WAN to Oracle SDE @ ArcCatalog 10.0 on a 9.2 or 3 SDE geodatabase.)  So I hope that gets fixed someday.  Create and modified dates should be on by default, it is such a basic piece of information.

[RickIngle]

It would help me very much to have the date a feature class was created shown in the listing in ArcCatalog. The date created can tell me much about my data and whether it is still valid.

[DuncanHornby]

I agree it would be great if ArcCatalog natively displayed date created. It would make for much easier data management.

But then again that is what metadata is all about....

If you create your dataset with a standard geoprocessing tool (e.g. Create Featureclass) then the creation date is inserted into the metadata. This can be displayed in ArcCatalog by adding it to the list of metadata items you wish to be displayed in ArcCatalog.

Now you are going to tell me you've never gone into the ArcCatalog Options.... 😉

Well its in Customize > ArcCatalog Options > Contents
Click on the Add button under the metadata section. Set Caption to Date created and property to Esri/CreaDate, width to about 15. Click OK and make sure its ticked on.

Et voila!  You have a creation date displayed next to your dataset, OK its not a nice format but it is the date. Ideally Esri should be showing this as default.

[RandyKreuziger]

Not as useful as you'd think.  As the SDE administrator II weekly update feature classes using the delete features and append.  So some of these feature classes appear to be years old when in fact the data was updated over the weekend.

[DuncanHornby]

kreuzrsk, sounds like you are describing the modification of an existing FeatureClass? If so then the creation date would (obviously) never change. The modification date would and you tick that on in the standards column panel in the ArcCatalog Options.

[RandyKreuziger]

Hornbydd, the modification field is blank for every one of our SDE feature classes.  Yet at least 30 of our 200 feature classes are updated through the delete and append method.  Not sure if ESRI considers that a bug or not.

[RachelParrinello]

I've been wanting this for years, and am just now getting around to submitting the idea....I'm glad others have already submitted and are promoting this idea.  This seems so very basic and helpful....why should this not be standard in ArcCatalog?  It could be configurable, so that if the user didn't want to see it, they could hide it.  Thank you.

[BillFox]

I see the point but it might get carried away in processing too much detail.

Is this looking for the last reconciled & posted to DEFAULT edit?

or also considering non-reconciled versioned child edits that may end up being rejected and not posted back to DEFAULT?

or the last schema edit?

or the last meta-data edit?

or drilling into potentially huge lists of geoprocessing history?

all that digging could make Catalog slow to try and view long lists of enterprise geodatabase content.

It might work if editor tracking is enabled on all objects but that is not always the case.

[Bud]

Merged from a separate idea.

In an enterprise geodatabase, I want to see a list of tables and FCs, and sort them by the last time they were edited. So that I can review unused tables and FCs and consider deleting them.

It would be great to have an OOTB tool for that.