How to find every reference to a particular domain in a geodatabase?

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03-12-2014 07:47 AM
AndrewRudin
Occasional Contributor III
Does anyone know how to use python to find every field (and fields on subtypes) that use a particular domain? Our SDE is 10.2 and on an Oracle database, and I have desktop 10.2.1. Basically if I need to change a domain (like change it's data type from string to integer) I need to delete it and recreate it.  In order to delete it I need to find every place it's used and un-reference it. This is hard to do in a large SDE where domains are shared between many fields and feature classes.

The out of the box method seems to be looping through EVERY feature class(and subtype) on the database and running arcpy.describe on every field see if they use a particular domain.  This seems extremely inefficient and will take forever on our large SDE.  Surely there must be a better way.

I figured querying the SDE administration tables would be quicker but ran into some walls.  By querying the GDB_Items and GDB_ItemRelationship tables I was able to see what feature classes reference a domain, but these don't seem to tell you which field(s) are using the domain, nor does it seems to show if a particular subtype uses a domain.

I was curious how SDE at 10.2 actually stores that a field is using domain x, and also how it tracks that subtype y uses domain x.  This way I can query the administration tables directly to make this process much faster.

I plan to use the proper toolbox tools to make the domain assignment changes, I just want to query the administrative tables to find the references and quickly as possible.

Thank you for any help you can provide,

Andrew
12 Replies
XanderBakker
Esri Esteemed Contributor

I have used this in the past:

def main():
    import arcpy
    import os

    # output file (change this)
    report = r"D:\Xander\Domains\list_unused_domains.txt"

    # database connection (change this)
    conn = r"C:\Users\xbakker\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\Desktop10.2\ArcCatalog\Dev 10.2.sde"

    # set encoding to utf-8 (for non ASCII chars)
    import sys
    reload(sys)
    print sys.getdefaultencoding()
    def_enc = sys.getdefaultencoding()
    sys.setdefaultencoding('utf8')

    with open(report, "w") as f:
        f.write("Domains not in use\n")

        # create list of domains
        domains = arcpy.da.ListDomains(conn)
        lst_names = [domain.name for domain in domains]

        # list featureclasses
        arcpy.env.workspace = conn
        lst_fds = arcpy.ListDatasets(feature_type="feature")
        lst_fds.append("")
        lst_doms = []
        for fds in lst_fds:
            lst_fc = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses(feature_dataset=fds)
            for fc in lst_fc:
                try:
                    flds = arcpy.ListFields(os.path.join(ws, fds, fc))
                    for fld in flds:
                        if fld.domain != "":
                            lst_doms.append(fld.domain)
                except:
                    pass


        # process tables
        lst_tbl = arcpy.ListTables()
        for tbl in lst_tbl:
            try:
                flds = arcpy.ListFields(tbl)
                for fld in flds:
                    if fld.domain != "":
                        lst_doms.append(fld.domain)
            except:
                pass

         # create list of domains not in use
        lst_notinuse = list(set(lst_names) - set(lst_doms))

         # write to file
        for dom in lst_notinuse:
            f.write("{0}\n".format(dom))

    # restore default settings
    sys.setdefaultencoding(def_enc)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

This does not get you the full list of domains that are in use. It is possible (and I have seen cases) where a column used with a default value in a subtype uses domain 'a' while the field itself uses domain 'b'. So if you have subtypes, you should check the domains in use by the subtypes too Use arcpy.da.ListSubtypes(featureclass).

Kind regards, Xander

GastonIzaguirre
New Contributor III

Xander,

Thank you very much for your answer and for sharing your script code.

Unfortunately I'm using ArcGIS version 10, which does not contains the arcpy.da module, so I will try to adapt the script to make it compatible, some kind of backport, if possible.

Kind regards,

Gaston.

0 Kudos
XanderBakker
Esri Esteemed Contributor

I'm afraid there is not much support for listing domains without the data access (da) module. You may have to use one of the other suggestions (like the one by Jake) directly on the database.