Best Methods for Updating Enterprise Feature Classes.

[JohnBrockwell]

Hello,

I'm currently working in a medium sized organization with many map needs. We do very little versioning because we are more consumers and viewers of data than creators. Also, our base layers are established and don't move much. When updating data we get from other agencies (Building Footprints, Street Centerlines, etc.) we prefer to overwrite the existing enterprise feature classes. Unfortunately, this usually can't happen because ArcGIS Server services are running off of these enterprise feature classes. I've read many GeoNet posts and searched on several  sites but I couldn't pinpoint a solution. I'd like to hear from the community and see how others deal with schema locks.

[MichaelVolz]

If the schema does not change between the different versions of the feature classes that get updated, then you can use a truncate and append approach for updating the enterprise feature classes.

If there are schema changes involved, then you would need to stop the affected service(s) to update the feature class.

[JohnBrockwell]

Sounds like you are performing this on the DB software side. Is this correct? I have never seen truncate tools in ArcGIS Desktop. Are you using Python to do this work? Thanks for the reply!

[Asrujit_SenGupta]

No, Truncate Table—Help | ArcGIS Desktop was being suggested.

[JoeBorgione]

For my money, the best thing an enterprise geodatabse offers is the ability to support more than one editor at the same time.  That's it.  I also support the oneway replication from the enterprise gdb to a file gdb, and publish your services using the data there in.  When you need to, sync the changes from the parent to the child and republish.

However, that model while tried and true can, will and should be replaced with feature data services instead of direct connect to the enterprise gdb for editing. You can still replicate from a feature data service to a file geodatabase to publish the data to a read-only audience.