Offer a standalone ArcCatalog replacement for ArcGIS Pro

[wayfaringrob]

In ye olden days, I enjoyed being able to use ArcCatalog as a GIS-savvy file explorer. I could open it and quickly zip around my files to get a quick glance. I usually keep Catalog open on my computer for these reasons. Sometimes a glance is all I need, and I can close the catalog and be done with it. If I wanted to do something with what I found, I could quickly open up a map document and drag the data that I had already navigated to over to the document.

Now, the process is much more cumbersome - the word "quickly" no longer applies. I still use ArcCatalog for those exploring and previewing and purposes since there is no true Pro equivalent. The catalog view doesn't quite meet my needs - you have to add it as a tab, and it doesn't remember folder connections (or at least the ones it remembers are specific to the project you happen to have open). Further, if you drag it out into its own window, it's useless, as the contents/catalog tree doesn't come with it. It's also impossible to drag into your map's TOC if you drag it out into its own window, as the TOC changes to reflect Catalog View. But I have to use both ArcCatalog and Catalog View, since I cannot drag and drop feature classes or shapefiles from ArcCatalog into an ArcGIS Pro project.

I believe a beefed up Catalog View, offered as a standalone application, would resolve many of these issues.

[Bart-JanSchoenmakers]

Would be amazing having a standalone ArcCatalog for ArcGIS PRO. I still use ArcCatalog 😐, since there is no alternative to view quickly your data. 

Having to create a new project to quickly scroll through your data is not an alternative. Even my alternative of a project without maps is slower. The problem is you quickly add maps to such kind of project.

[konsta_kuorikoski]

Just from pure snappiness and resource (PC memory) standpoint it would be wonderful to have just Catalog functionality in one place. Having just dedicated project open, with the connections I use with ArcCatalog, Pro takes about 500megs of RAM not doing anything. There's also some odd inconsistency as both Pro and ArcMap don't remember my credentials to our Oracle database. But ArcCatalog and FME do. 

[JasonRoberts]

10 years later, I am still pining for ArcCatalog in the ArcPro world, and dreading its final sunsetting in 2025. With all due respect to Esri's designers, removing it was a user experience mistake.

Consider the two most widely used desktop applications, the web browser and the word processor. The browser is where we go when we want to find and examine things on the internet. Its close cousin, the file manager (e.g. File Explorer on Windows) does a similar job on the local machine and network, with additional functionality for organizational tasks, like copy and delete. Both can be quickly started and stopped, with ease and speed of navigation being the highest priority. Critically, neither requires creating, loading, or saving anything. You can customize their behavior if desired, e.g. bookmarks in your browser, but its always trivial and fast to "start from scratch" and navigate to what you want.

By contrast, word processors and other "productivity applications" are where we go when we want to create something. These programs are fundamentally about creating, editing, loading, and saving things. Your creations are saved to documents or projects, which you organize and share with others. The UIs of these applications are optimized around creating and editing tasks.

While these two activities—browsing and authoring—often occur together, they are not the same thing. Browsing may be conducted in support of authoring, but the mental processes are different. The long standing pattern of having one app for browsing/file management and others for authoring allows for different designs and functions, and users appreciate this. While I want to appreciate Esri's attempt to make a single program (ArcPro) that can do both, it fails as the "GIS data browser and organizer" that ArcCatalog was.

I would like to see an ArcCatalog-like data-browsing experience for ArcGIS Pro. 

1. It should be possible to start and stop it without having to create a project, or even consider that as a question. The very idea is antithetical to the browsing experience. Do not impose the mental load on the user that by simply wanting to search and browse data, they must mentally commit to saving something.

2. There should be just one tree view. There should not be a "Contents" pane and also a "Catalog" pane, both of which show a tree view.

3. It should be extremely fast at switching between things.

4. There should be a preview pane. Like ArcCatalog, this pane should initially default to showing essentially nothing. It should not show Metadata by default. This only makes it slower. Most users do not care about metadata (seriously), and if they need to know it, they'll ask. Do not display Metadata just because you want to display something and it is faster than Geography or Table. What users want is for you to display Geography by default, but you legitimately can't because it sometimes takes a while to so. Users understand that, and are ok with it. But don't provide Metadata just because its the only fast thing.

5. When switching between one dataset and another, e.g. between rasters, the preview pane should not turn blank for an extended period of time. Users often want to quickly compare one dataset to another. Having the pane turn blank makes it harder to notice what changed when you switched. If the second dataset requires loading a large number of features, there's no way around it. But if its just one raster to another, and they have the same spatial extent, it shouldn't even blink, just BOOM raster A to raster B.

6. The preview pane should NOT show basemaps by default, although this should be configurable. Basemaps often interfere with viewing the data being displayed, unless you are lucky enough that the default symbology agrees well with the default basemap. Usually you are not, and you have to either turn off the basemap, or select a different basemap, or try to get different symbology. But what are you doing when you do this? You're making as map! But you don't want to be making a map; if you wanted that, you would have started a map project. On top of this, the basemap slows everything down, especially if the data are not in a similar coordinate system. So no basemaps by default.

7. There should be an Identify tool, just like in ArcCatalog. When I just want to look up some attribute of some feature, or find out what raster value was at some location, I do NOT want to have to create a map project!

8. In ArcCatalog, when you switched to a new dataset, it would try to reuse the extent and the same view (Geography, Metadata, or Table). This is an excellent design choice. Users often want to examine a different layer at the same location. Or if they were looking at the Table of one layer, they often want to look at the table of another.

9. It would be great if, optionally, you could apply symbology to something and the browser would remember it. I know symbology seems like an "authoring" task rather than a "browsing" task. It is actually both. While browsing, you want to apply some "light" symbology just to make things easier to view. This is similar to your web browser in which you might adjust the zoom level of a particular website—your browser remembers this when you return to it later. With GIS data, it would be ideal if the GIS browser happened to select a great symbology for whatever you're viewing, but this is a very hard problem. Given that its still not solved, it should allow the user to select something and remember it for later.

10. Having Back / Forward buttons similar to a web browser would be excellent. Users understand that mechanic unconsciously now.

11. The ability to perform organizational tasks like a file manager, and to run geoprocessing tools, would allow easy, one-off work to be done without the friction of creating a project.

Does it seem like I'm describing ArcCatalog? While that was not my specific goal, it turns out that ArcCatalog offered most of these features. I'm sure I haven't hit on every one, but I'd bet that the list above covers many of the reasons why people have a hard time letting ArcCatalog go. Esri should listen to that demand and bring it back, or something like it.

Thank you for reading this request.

[BruceHarold]

Hear hear - I completely agree.  I did most of my geoprocessing in ArcCatalog too.

[MarcelSt-Germain]

Not the only feature live behind in Pro.  The all in one make it a big bulked software.

ESRI doesn't know the KISS approach for software design.

[AndreaB_]

@JasonRoberts That is so well written! And I agree! Fingers crossed.

[CTalbot]

You can do quite a bit in the ArcPro catalog view.

However, I cannot in good conscience say this is a good replacement. 

@JasonRoberts appreciate your well written post as this expresses many of my and GIS crew's frustrations.  

[JasonRoberts]

Thanks, @AndreaB_. I was trying to stimulate some fresh discussion on this topic by making a new post, but the moderator merged it with this existing idea. Hopefully it won't get buried.

In any case, I must admit I'm not very hopeful, as it represents a serious philosophical departure from what I can only assume was a major user experience decision: to merge all stand-alone apps into one, and reorient everything around the concept of a Project. With the original idea only having ~70 kudos after 3-4 years, I doubt the thread here will carry the day. I suspect whoever made that user experience decision has already heard "bring back ArcCatalog" numerous times and has not been moved. I was hoping to call attention to the high level user experience concept of separating browsing/organizing from authoring, and maybe catch their attention on a day they were feeling open minded. If they ever read this thread, please give it a second thought and I'm happy to buy you a drink!

[JasonRoberts]

Thanks @CTalbot — glad to know that resonated with you. I still have access to ArcGIS Desktop and keep ArcCatalog open next to Pro. I'm not looking forward to losing it later this year.

[DryCreekEng]

@JasonRoberts I appreciate your efforts to keep this crucial post going! ArcCatalog as a standalone item is a must for data management. I would do bulk projections and organize/view data without the pain of having to access it through a project. Let's keep the parade going! Bring back ArcCatalog!