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Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

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05-30-2023 07:41 AM
Status: Open
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mpboyle
Frequent Contributor

When adding a "double" field type in ArcGIS Pro, please allow precision and scale to be defined if using an enterprise geodatabase.

For example: if I add a double field to an enterprise geodatabase dataset, the precision and scale can not be defined when adding the field(s) through the Pro interface, and this results in them being 38,8.  In most of our use cases this far exceeds any precision and scale we'd use and bloats the table.  If I want to alter the precision and scale, I have to manually do it through the database interface like SSMS.

9 Comments
SSWoodward
Status changed to: Needs Clarification

Thanks for the idea @mpboyle, What version of ArcGIS Pro are you using, and what part of the UI are you using to add a new field?

Are you able to successfully define the precision and scale in the fields view when adding a double field to an egdb?

 

 

mpboyle

I'm using Pro 3.1.2

Yes, I can define the precision and scale when using the Field view, but when using the interface below this seems like extra steps.

I'd like the precision and scale to be options when creating a new feature class by right-clicking on a database connection and selecting New | Feature Class.  Circled in green is the area where I'd like to see the precision and scale be options.  If you create a text field through this interface you can define the max characters...something similar for double fields would be nice, in my opinion.

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SSWoodward
Status changed to: Open

Thanks for getting back, @mpboyle.  That makes total sense.  I've updated the name of the idea for clarity. 

ZachBodenner

When using the Create Feature Class wizard, including a float or double field does not provide the user with the opportunity to specify precision or scale. This would be useful because while disallowing this capability helps to circumvent  other issues with these fields (such as the specified field type being ignored if the precision and scale are incompatible), it also makes it easy to overlook improper scale and precision settings if a user enters data into the feature class before they manually alter the defaults.

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As it stands, default values for precision and scale are 6/1 for Float and 7/1 for double. If a user wants to adjust these values, they need to do it before any data is added to the feature class. It would be nice to specify the values during the creation of the feature class itself.

 

SSWoodward

Thanks for the idea @ZachBodenner ,

I made a small edit to specify this Idea pertains to the create feature class wizard, instead of the GP tool.  The wizard is an interface that combines many individual GP tools into a single workflow.  


Bud
by

Agreed. I want to create DOUBLE fields in the Create Table wizard where the precision is 15 and the scale is 2.

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ArcGIS Pro 3.2.2

 

RonnieRichards

In past releases of ArcGIS it was possible to modify the precision and scale for numeric fields when importing fields from another class during New Feature Class or New Table create screens. 

In the latest versions of Pro 3.2.2 it appears the numeric precision and scale are not shown and the result seems to have issues maintaining the precision/scale from the import. It would be nice we could fix these issues before the tables get created incorrectly... 

Please restore the ability to edit the numeric precision and scale, we can still edit text field lengths on the fields screen.

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Thanks
Ronnie

RonnieRichards

I submitted this because ran into a bug in Pro 3.2.2 with all numerics fields from import being created as numeric(7,1)

Template Table used to import fields and precision and scale are not respected for any of them, resulting in all 7,1 values including a float data type! Please fix this stuff!!

RonnieRichards_2-1712862611747.pngRonnieRichards_3-1712862615002.png

GIS_Spellblade

Yeah I came to see if this was an idea already or not. Currently the only way to define numeric precision is through the Alter Field GP Tool or the Data Design GUI. I would argue that most users create feature classes utilizing the Create Feature Class / Create Table wizard. Based on @RonnieRichards comment above, it looks like this functionality was present in ArcGIS Desktop and just was not ported over to ArcGIS Pro.

https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/how-to-customize-numeric-data-precision-and-scale-in-a...

The current state of affairs is pretty burdensome as a field as to be newly added, properly defined, and then the old field tossed out. My organization has had to do a lot of re-work in terms of data clean-ups as our Analysts were unaware of the default values that were being created through the use of the Create [...] wizards.