Enable ArcGIS Pro to access ESRI Personal Geodatabases

[DavidWheelock]

Please enable ArcGIS Pro to use the ESRI Personal Geodatabase.  PGD's are compact, efficient, and an ESRI standard.  PGD's offer easy, built-in interoperability, and table data in a PGD can be easily accessed from any MS Office program or any other program able to read a MS Access database.  It does all of this in a single, compact file, without the overhead of an enterprise or workgroup geodatabase which require a database server and without the clutter of a file geodatabase.  FYI, we do have an enterprise geodatabase for when we need that.

It's deeply troubling that ESRI has chosen to deny its loyal, long-time customers the ability even to read their data in an ESRI standard format, the Personal Geodatabase.

No, a File Geodatabase is not a suitable alternative or replacement.  A FGD is a silo and cuts the data off from most other programs.  It isolates the data and can only be accessed from ESRI programs or GIS programs that have access to it and cannot be read at all by office productivity software or any other database software.  It's not useful to me.

ESRI's explanation in the ArcGIS Pro docs:

http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/tool-reference/tool-errors-and-warnings/001001-010000/tool-errors-a...

ESRI states that "Personal geodatabases do not scale well in the 64-bit environment" and will not be supported.  It recommends a FGD. 

My response to ESRI:

Please let me and your other users be the judge of whether a personal geodatabase suits our needs.  We can decide for ourselves when we need to scale to a more robust GDB format.  Permanently terminating our ability to use the PGD is not a useful solution for me.  Again, a FGD is not a suitable replacement for the reasons cited above.

[DavidWheelock]

See this closing comment with explanation: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/enable-arcgis-pro-to-access-esri-personal/idc-p/1179153#M19746

[Anonymous User]

Personally, I'm glad to see personal geodatabases die... The portable geodatabase (.geodatabase) format that is a derivative of SQLite is much more open (though the ESRI version is not to open standards, it's similar in function to the old school personal geodatabase).

Moving away from MS Access to the opensource SQLite has a number of benefits, including ease of support.

[KeithD1]

I fully support and agree with ESRI's decision to re-implement this important feature using SQLite. This is better than the legacy MDB format. 

[JoabelBarbieri]

This is extremely important. A python tool a GP or anything in PRO  ...we need to be able to pull personal gdb into PRO without having to keep ArcGIS Desktop installed. Even a conversion tool that gets a mdb and converts into gdb or geopackage.

Some users are recurring to QGIS to read mdb. That shouldn't be acceptable from ESRI's standpoint.

[StevenDel_Favero]

Please support personal GDBs in ArcPro. They are extremely useful in managing complex tabular data related to spatial data. Esri likes to pretend they do not need to support such things. Also, update SDE while your at it. It is completely archaic after many years of neglect.

[marple]

No support of pGDB in ArcGIS Pro is a huge set-back for flexibility. Lacking the possibility to change between analysis in GIS and querying in MS Access is a no-go for me. A conversion tool is not sufficient. This deterioration force me to either keep on using ArcGIS Desktop (as long as possible) or shift to QGIS, which works fine for my current work.

[ElaineEvans]

There is no plan to support personal geodatabases in ArcGIS Pro. 

Microsoft has deprecated support for the Microsoft Jet Database Engine 4.0 libraries and considers t.... This is the Microsoft technology that previously made support for personal geodatabases possible in ArcMap within ArcGIS Desktop. Also, there are no 64-bit versions of these libraries and ArcGIS Pro is a 64-bit application. Since the technology used to make personal geodatabases is no longer supported and Microsoft is advising against using these deprecated formats, there is no viable or supported path forward for offering personal geodatabases in ArcGIS Pro.

Moving forward our recommendation is to migrate your data from a personal geodatabase to a mobile geodatabase. To learn more, see this blog, which is the first in an ongoing series to help guide you through this experience.

[StevenDel_Favero]

A Mobile GDB is not a substitute for a Personal GDB in any way. This is extremely misleading. Even with the proper ODBC drivers, loading sqlLite tables in MS Access, you cannot build queries because of the funky field types for strings and dates in a Mobile GDB. It is essentially worthless.

Esri has still stubbornly failed to provide this capability in Pro. Esri is deluded in thinking that data isn't complicated and dismisses the many beneifts of editing and querying data in MS Access.

[rlsantore]

@StevenDel_Favero Spot on!

[AZendel]

It looks like the 64-bit compatible accdb MS Access format allows 'OLE Object' data types, which is the same field data type that the .mdb formatted Personal Geodatabases used to store the shape/geometry fields. So in theory, ESRI could have migrated the Personal Geodatabases to this new format.

ESRI, if you're not keen on porting the PGDB to accdb, please start treating "Personal ArcSDE" geodatabases (based on SQL Express and one step down from the 'Workgroup Geodatabases') as first class citizens in Pro:

1) Allow the creation of these (and Workgroup GDBs) in Pro. We still have to do this in ArcMap or ArcCatalog

2) Make the user restrictions similar to the file geodatabase and personal geodatabase: a substantial number of read connections, only one editor. I myself hit the 5 read connection limit when I have a few geoprocessing models running while also reviewing the data in a maps. My coworker should also be able to read the data to help me QC output. You allow this in File Geodatabases and Personal Geodatabases, so why not in 'Personal ArcSDE' databases? This will still allow us to access our data via SQL tools: MS SQL Server Mgmt Studio, Azure Data Studio, ODBC links into numerous applications. 

I was excited for the SQLite/Mobile geodatabases when they were announced, but as Steven noted above, they aren't very compatible with ODBC and third party tools:

1) you cannot do joins against text fields when connected via ODBC since the drivers consider all text fields to be 'memo' or long text fields. This is a problem in read-only (SELECT) queries and update queries. 

2) you cannot update a non-spatial field in any type of feature class because the drivers don't have the libraries to maintain the spatial indexes. I believe that an update in SQLite is more akin to deleting the original record (feature) and then creating a new record (feature) -- this can't be done without the libraries needed to maintain the spatial index. 

We need reliable SQL access to our data. If you won't give us ACCDB database, please loosen the reins the 'Personal ArcSDE' databases to allow more read connections. Please also allow the creation and management of these database types in Pro.