"Automatically save edits" is disabled, but so are the 'Save' and 'Discard' button. And my edits are being saved

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05-01-2017 09:46 AM
AZendel
Occasional Contributor III

Am I missing something? I personally don't like the idea of edits being saved without me deliberately saving or discarding them.  What if I accidentally select 1000 features and hit the delete key when I only intend to delete one feature?  As you can see below, I've unchecked "Automatically save edits", but the 'Save' and 'Discard' buttons are disabled, so I can't use them.  If I close Pro and reopen it, my edits have persisted even though I never clicked save.  As you can see, I've also checked "Show dialog to confirm save/discard edits".  In this particular case, I was editing points features in an unversioned feature class stored in a SQL Express "Personal SDE" database. 

It's been a while and I can't remember what these settings were 'out of the box'.  I think that "automatically save edits" and "Make newly added layers editable by default" so both be disabled when someone starts using pro for the first time.  I believe the latter is enabled by default. If so, that is very dangerous. I think every edit session should be very deliberate, especially when editing 'enterprise' data.  

25 Replies
Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor

I think the key here is you're using a non-versioned editing workflow which means you're doing edits directly on the BASE/BUSINESS table.  As a result, those edits are directly committed to the BASE table without for SAVE or DISCARD icons being enabled.

In ArcMap, the only way to not save these edits is to stop the edit session without saving.  In ArcGIS Pro (currently in 1.4), you cannot discard changes made to nonversioned data stored in an enterprise geodatabase.  This may change in 2.0.

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AZendel
Occasional Contributor III

Thanks for the response. For the sake of comparison, I did some testing with the same feature class in ArcMap using these settings:

I started an edit session, created a few points and then clicked stop editing. I was prompted to save edits and the new points disappeared after I opted not to save the edits.  So it seems to be behaving like a file geodatabase: one editor, more than one readers.  I realize that Pro is a work in progress and new functionality is being released incrementally.  But in my opinion, the out of the box editor settings should be (if they're not already):

1) Make newly added layers editable by default: OFF

2) Automatically save edits: OFF

3) Save edits when saving project: OFF

And those should be applicable to un-versioned feature classes as well.  

NicoleGamble1
Esri Contributor

I generally work with file geodatabases, but I have not changed my editing settings in Pro and here is what I have by default in case this is useful:

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Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor

This is also the default editing options in ArcGIS Pro 2.0 BETA as well.

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AZendel
Occasional Contributor III

Thanks for following up.  I couldn't remember what was enabled/disabled by default  

AZendel
Occasional Contributor III

Edits are still being automatically saved when editing this non-versioned FC in Pro 2.0 release edition (not beta).  I still think that we need to be able to stop editing and then opt discard edits.  I can live with the inability to use the undo and redo buttons, but we need a way to discard edits without saving.  If this doing so is possible in ArcMap, then the SQL Express database is capable of this functionality. The problem seems to be with the ArcGIS Pro interface.

If you're wondering why, I'm using an unversioned FC in SQL Express because I absolutely need SQL access to this feature class.  While I never create and delete features in a feature class using SQL, I do a lot of SQL updates to non-spatial columns via extensive data processing code that isn't suitable for geoprocessing tools - for several reasons.  

Thanks, AZ

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Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor

There's an Enhancement Request -

ENH-000102281: Create a radio option for Automatically saving edits in ArcGIS Pro similar to ArcMap.

As well as an ArcGIS Idea to add this functionality:

 https://community.esri.com/ideas/13010-in-arcgis-pro-allow-formal-edit-sessions-for-unversioned-data...

AZendel
Occasional Contributor III

Awesome, thanks! I realize Pro is a work in progress.  It's a complex, massive piece of software that functions quite well in most respects.  Props to the ESRI team who has pulled it off. 

Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor

Indeed.  Pro has advanced considerably from the 1.0 release and still has some work ahead of it certainly.  Prior to my reply, I created a non-versioned feature class in PostgreSQL in ArcGIS Pro 2.0 to test the non-versioned editing workflow.  My save/discard buttons were grayed out as well. The "edit session" automatically saved each edit and did not give me the option to discard edits by not saving the edit session.

Essentially, when you click the Edit core tab, it starts an edit session in Pro.  As you know, there is no "stop editing" command in Pro.  This process is initiated when the user clicks on another core/contextual tab.

In my conversation with one of the Pro Dev Team - "Currently, when editing nonversioned data within an enterprise geodatabase- there is no ability to undo edits, or discard / not save edits once edits are made. This is because the first edit in the edit session begins the database transaction and the individual edit operations performed are committed to the database as a single transaction. When editing nonversioned data in ArcGIS Pro, each transaction is automatically committed to the database without needing to 'save' the edits."

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