Managing Data Using .gdb, how to do it?

[GIS_CityofBerwyn]

Hello,

I have a bunch of files that are poorly organized, some are baked into previous/old projects, some live in .gdb, some are shapefiles that are organized to different folders. I am working on an overhaul of our data management, to restart from a more organized place. I need to preserve the old data locations to not disrupt file paths for my old projects, which I am saving for the time being until everything is updated. I have a few questions if anyone can provide advice:

1- I understand that each new project creates a default .gdb for the project. That is fine with me, as long as none of the feature classes/data from the project autosaves in there. I want the project to pull from data that is preserved as MASTER copies. I want to avoid the problem of data being only accessible inside one project. If a project is deleted, does the default .gdb get deleted too?

2- Are .gdp tied to a specific project? Is it poor data management to have a new project pull from an existing .gdb?

I had originally thought I should create new MASTER versions (copied from the originals) of all the data, save them to organized folders within file explorer, and then pull those into each new project. However, it seems like there are a lot more tools that make using .gdb easier long term. Can I achieve the same result of saving a MASTER version of the data to a geodatabase that is standalone (not connected to a specific project)? My problem with this is that data saved to .gdb do not come up when searching within Microsoft File Explorer, which means if I am looking for the data in the future, I would have to know which specific .gdb to open. Is there a workaround to locating files within different .gdb?

Thank you for any input/help you may have. Most of my data is simple feature classes/feature datasets that contain point/line/polygon information.

-> Editing to add: Can I also include a readme file in the .gdb to have information for others to read? How would i save that to the .gdp?

[Nick_Creedon]

There is a lot you can do to manage GDB's. I will touch on a little here.

Creating a new project in ArcGIS Pro will automatically create a Default GDB, this gdb will be stored in the same file path folder as your project. This GDB isn't necessarily tied to the project, you can duplicate the GBD to be stored elsewhere, you can rename it, you can even mark a different GDB in your ArcGIS Pro project as Default for when you are trying to target a specific location for exporting data etc.

In ArcGIS Pro you can add multiple GDB's all you have to do is right-click Databases in your catalog, click Add Database and search for its location. Then you can work with that specific database in your project. It is not poor management to pull from an existing GDB. Make sure you are keeping the GDB up to date along with its data.

Deleting a project will not delete the GDB unless you delete the folder where the project and GDB is stored. If a GDB is stored in another location, you can delete the project folder and not worry.

Creating a MASTER is a good idea, I would create a folder structure where you would want to store it and go from there. You can add additional GDB's and have data separated by category, sometimes one GDB with a lot of data can be demanding on a computer.

Searching for data in Microsoft Explorer can be difficult, maybe you have already. I would try to search for data through ArcGIS Pro you are able to see the who feature class, shapefile and GDB vs seeing all of its extra content that can be an eyesore to look at.

Hope this helps give you some more insight, there is a lot you can do for data management!

[MichaelVolz]

How about placing data in currently multiple locations into an enterprise geodatabase (SQL Server, Oracle, POSTgres), so there is an authoritative location?

[BrianMcKeon]

SQL Server is poorly supported by ESRI, impossible to group manage with Windows Authentication to the db. The ESRI solution of make the non DBO users sysadmin role is absolutely insane. The editing users get System Admin for Sql Server while the geodatabase owner is only database owner role??? Completely breaks everything if using common databases servers, where users can break other non-related databases just to access the tables as DBO for the ESRI stuff. If they would let us pick the schema instead of the insanity of forcing it based on domain\login would make things a lot more logical with Sql Server, else your stuck using sql logins for everything, and all the fun security issues that presents for teams working on common datasets. Even if they would check role membership and accept dbo roled users as dbo instead of domain\login schema that would be a step in the right direction, but no make them system administrators of the sql server, absolute insanity. 

[GIS_CityofBerwyn]

Thank you Nick. This is very helpful moving forward. Curious if you had any insight on my last question, about the readme file? I haven't found a way to input a readme file onto the .gdb but I think that would be helpful in the future.

Thanks again for the help!

[Nick_Creedon]

This is a specific task I have not had to accomplish yet.

I did some quick research, and this might be the solution and or get you close.

1. Create the README File: Write your README content in a text file (e.g., README.txt).

2. Add the README to the Geodatabase:

   Using ArcGIS Pro:

   1. Open ArcGIS Pro and connect to your File Geodatabase.
   2. Right-click on the geodatabase in the Catalog pane and select New > Table.
   3. Create a new table with fields to store the README content (e.g., a field for the title and another for the content).
   4. Add a new record to this table and paste your README content into the appropriate fields.

Hopefully this helps!

[Nick_Creedon]

That is true. If you are working with a team/organization, Enterprise and or ArcGIS Online for hosting data would be very beneficial. Pros and Cons to both, do your research and talk to someone to help find you the right product. If you are one person, you can definitely just work out of a local or cloud drive environment.