Enterprise UN vs FGDB

[DLee]

Hi,

We manage a small municipal electrical network using Utility Network (UN) Version 4 on Enterprise Geodatabase 10.8. With no immediate upgrade plans, I've successfully created a local file geodatabase using an asset package and UN Version 7. I'm now evaluating whether to continue development in the Enterprise environment or switch to the local file geodatabase. Is supporting multiple users the primary advantage of the Enterprise Utility Network, or are there other significant benefits?

Thanks!

[RobertKrisher]

If all you're interested in doing is having a single-user database that you can work on locally, then a local geodatabase may be all you need. If you want others in your organization to be able to access the data, you'll need to have shared services shared through ArcGIS Enterprise.  This is especially true if you want to support any sort of web or mobile applications.

[RichRuh · Accepted solution]

An Enterprise geodatabase would also give you access to versioning. This could be useful if you wanted to perform any analysis on proposed network changes without impacting the system of record in default.

If you decide to stay with a local database, you might want to consider using a mobile geodatabase instead of a file geodatabase.  Don't let the name fool you- it's just a geodatabase stored using SQLite. I've found them to be faster than file geodatabases.