Preserve GlobalID not working like it should

[DamonBreen]

Hey all,

I have a workflow where I annually publish a map with updates reflecting new features from field maps, and we are working for the 2023 iteration of these maps now. Generally, I will go to the previous years map, export all of my features as shapefiles or FGDB files add them to the new map, and load them into my new database. However, my relationships are built on GlobalID to GUID relationships, and to not lose visibility on inspections, I will do "Preserve GlobalIDs" and assign the new Global ID field to the GUID field as the ESRI procedure states. I have done this successfully for a few years now, but we have run into an issue where we get a warning saying that to use "Preserve GlobalIDs", we have to have a unique index on the GlobalID field. I saw on some ESRI documentation that using the "Add Attribute Index" data management tool will fix this, but it has not in my case. Even after I run the tool I get the same error. Can someone help point me in the right direction? We use this workflow quite a bit and it will be difficult to make this work without a fix.

Thanks,

Damon

[Anonymous User]

Hello,

I recently had the same issue, but then I realized I had a filter on the primary feature layer (GlobalID).  Do you have any filters set? Annette

[DamonBreen]

We just double checked, no filters set on any of the layers in the map.

[RhettZufelt · Accepted solution]

Unique GlobalID's are not supported in FGDB.  Either convert to SDE or mobile geodatabase to add unique index to GlobalID field.

R_

[DamonBreen]

I have never used anything except FGDB and this workflow has always worked in the past. Why was this never an issue previously? Is there another workaround? If I switch to a mobile GDB are there any drawbacks?

[RhettZufelt]

Not really sure, but I recently had this same issue and that was the solution as per ESRI support.

• Unique and ascending indexes are not supported for shapefiles or file geodatabases. These parameters...

Which is exactly what I experienced.  The tool would not give any errors, but no unique index(s) created.

Not sure if there are drawbacks (other than ruling out ArcMap), but looks pretty similar to FGDB but "better".

R_

[DamonBreen]

Great, I saw the addition of the mobile geodatabases a while back, and never had a reason to look into them. Hopefully this addresses the situation. Thank you!