Trouble checking out my shapefile

[MichaelMarlatt]

I've been struggling to get the checkin/out functions to work properly.  I've been trying to checkout a shapefile I made and have had very limited success, but checking back in has been a complete failure.  After trying again on some sample data and succeeding, I think there is something about my shapefile that the checkout function doesn't like. 

I created my shapefile inside a file geodatabase and have tried everything I could think of or read about to make it work.  I've tried the checkout functions in both ArcToolbox and on the DataManager toolbar; both crash ArcMap when I use them on this shapefile.  Occasionally the Toolbox command produces an AXF despite crashing, which I am able to use and edit in ArcPad (v8) but cannot check back in.  I receive a different error depending on which checking function I use:  "There are no more files" from the Toolbox, and "Did not contain transaction log" from the toolbar.  I was careful to perform the checkout using the "Check out for disconnected editing in ArcPad" option. 

About this shapefile: it's got a HUGE number of fields (nearly 300) so it wouldn't surprise me if that's some part of the problem.  I made it this large as a test.  I'm about to revise an applet used to collect information during utility pole inspections, which currently uses five or six DBF files to hold all the data collected and I wanted to see if I could hold all of it in a single shapefile. 

If someone could try checking out this shapefile into an AXF for me I would be grateful if they could let me know if it worked.  I would be extremely grateful if someone could shed some light on exactly why it isn't working for this shapefile.

Thank you,

Mike M

[IvanKautter]

If you run the Check Geometry tool on your file geodatabase feature class (and that is the correct term, feature class, not shapefile, in this case) you will find that the first feature OBJECTID = 1 has null geometry.  It is not a valid feature. I was able to check out to axf with an error.  The axf only contained the second feature.  I was able to edit the feature and confirm that ArcPad registered that it had been edited by inspecting the axf file in ArcPad Studio.  On trying to check in those changes, there was an error that crashed ArcCatalog and those edits were not reflected in the feature class.

After editing and removing the first feature, I tried to the same process again and met the same results. Error on check out (Full path to axf string is empty), axf generated, edited, check back in, error, edits not checked in.

In both cases the resulting axf file did not have a layer definition for the feature class, although one is always generated by default.

If I were to diagnose the problem, I would say that you simply have too many fields in your feature class.  Since I did specify a full path and name for the axf file despite the Check Out tool reporting an empty string, it makes me think that each one of your fields may be entered as a parameter in the execution of the tool.  At some point a maximum size or number of parameters is hit, the tools spits out what it can and returns an error that may be true but is not quite correct.

The maximum number of fields in a SQL Server Express 2005 table is 1024.  You have not exceeded that limit but you may have exceeded the capacity of ArcGIS to process the request that Check Out tool is making.

All testing I did was in ArcGIS 10 and ArcPad 10. I tested both with the file geodatabase at the 9.3 version and at 10 version.