Geodatabase Stored on Network Drive

[Ivy_Hinson]

Hi, I am the new GIS coordinator and need to be able to remove schema locks and edit geodatabases even when others have the feature class open. All of our geodatabases are stored on a network drive. How would I do this?

[George_Thompson]

If this is a file geodatabase, that may not be possible to remove locks (I do not see a way).

Are you seeing these files if you open the "<name>.gdb" folder?

If you remove those files in the folder, you can cause corruption of the file geodatabase. So, I would NOT recommend that you remove those files.

The best bet is to ask all your users to close the clients and do what you need to then. Also be sure to stop any ArcGIS Servers that have services pointing to the file geodatabase.

[ThomasHoman]

If these are file geodatabases <dataset>.gdb then you should be moving to a different data method that supports multiple concurrent access - database engines like MS SQL, Oracle, PostGIS, and others support this task. Take a look at https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/geodatabases/overview/types-of-geodatabases.htm . This reference is dated (personal geodatabases no longer supported) but the points are relevant visually https://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc15/tech-workshops/tw_739-37.pdf 

File geodatabases are not designed for concurrent edit access so forcibly removing schema locks sets yourself up for data corruption if you have multiple concurrent editors. The best way to remove the schema locks is to have them exit the application.

Regards,

Tom