Replication Tools in Pro

[mpboyle]

I attended the Esri UC this past week and was a little surprised to learn that Distributed Geodatabase tools are not supported in Pro and there is currently no plan to implement them.

I understand Pro already has tools for downloading a map and working offline, and that seems fine for a replacement for check-in / check-out replicas.  However, we rely pretty heavily on the one-way and two-way replica scenarios within our organization.

As an example, we have multiple editing geodatabases typically divided out by departments.  As part of our daily workflow, we use the synchronize changes tool to push edits from our production editing geodatabases to two replicated geodatabases, one that is an internal read-only geodatabase where non-editors can read other departmental data and a second that is used exclusively for web services.

We are very happy with this workflow for a number of reasons:

1. The number of users that can connect to a production editing database is relatively small and controlled
2. Production database size stays relatively small
3. High isolation of data ... for schema changes or other processes that require an exclusive schema lock, we only have to notify a small number of users.  We can then make the necessary changes and NOT affect any web services or users that are not production editors.

In another example, we have a two-way replica established with a City government in order to replicate 911 datasets between our organizations.  This workflow is important to both organizations as it greatly reduces the time it takes to compile datasets for dispatch updates and provides both organizations with current information in on-premise relational databases that are used for other business functions.

I'd like to hear from Esri folks what is being done to provide the same type of workflow with Pro tools?  I don't see any other type of workflow that can be used with Pro to accomplish the same type of workflow.  Copying datasets is NOT a realistic solution when replication is a much better solution.  Neither is truncating or appending data.  In both of these scenarios your moving entire datasets where replication will only move edits.

Again, I want to emphasize this is using one-way or two-way replication and NOT check-in / check-out.  If there are other tools within Pro or at the Enterprise GIS platform that provide the same workflow, I'd be very interested in learning more about them.

Otherwise, I have to think I'm not the only person that's really disappointed to learn that replication / distributed geodatabase tools are not being implemented with Pro.

[KoryKramer]

Yup, that is a big request that is coming https://community.esri.com/ideas/9987 

[Anonymous User]

Kory Kramer‌   

[ThomasColson]

The number one big need for replication for us is: 

1. The remote office that will never, ever, have an internet connection good enough to download even the smallest of feature services for offline editing, not ever 10 points;
2. The mega-giant project with thousands of points and photo attachments that even with a 64 Core arcgis server and a 100 MB fiber connection, cannot download the whole AOI as an offline editable map where editing will occur over many 40-hour weeks;

In both of those cases, the data steward uses the Arc Cat tools to create a distributed FGDB for editing, and usually thumbdrives it to the editor. This is a pretty common workflow. I'm currently an "editor" in scenario 2, for a public safety application. No way a dataset that size will "not" fail when attempting to "download map". Tried for years since ArcGIS server came out. 

Putting an ArcGIS server at either end of that workflow is not feasible for replication, either, if I'm interpreting the previous answer correctly. We cannot afford to stand up ArcGIS servers all over the place when all the customer needs is a new replica FGDB every week. 

[DavidWatkins]

Again, thank you for all of your feedback.  We just put up a blog post related to this topic. We are working on a design that we believe will meet your requirements. Please take a look at the post when you get a chance and continue to let us know about the different ways you are using geodatabase replication in your organizations by commenting here or in the blog post thread. 

[DarylHochhalter]

There is no good reason for ESRI to limit the users ability to use replication which is really all they would be doing by following the course they seem to have chosen. Basically, it would only be available through online services and now called sync. From my perspective, the concept makes no sense.

However, since we now need to provide reasons to keep functionality some of us have used for many years, that works quite well, I will provide this scenario/workflow. We have some data we make available to the public and some data we collect from the public, the data requires different permissions and is exposed in different ways to the public. it is an extra layer of security to publish the services from replicas of our enterprise database. In fact it works quite well to publish services from replica FGDB's for maps that will only be viewed by user.