rename database being used by SDE

[DaveOrlando]

Hello,

I am using a 9.2 SDE running a 'multiple spatial database model'. (still using 9.2 due to an old MapObjects dependency) and I would like to change the names of these databases to something more logical. The names are old and don't make sense anymore.

Is there a sde command that can rename the database in its internal tables. I've seen the sdetable -rename, but is there something similar for the source database? I can see the database_name field in a few different tables but would be apprehensive to fiddle with them directly.

Thanks,
Dave

[VinceAngelo]

You *really* don't want to rename databases -- Doing so corrupts all the fully-qualified
database object references generated by ArcSDE (sde_* table metadata is just a trivial
part of the problem). This is why renaming databases is unsupported by Esri.

If you want to create new single-database model ArcSDE instance databases, you can
name them appropriately, then copy the data from old to new.

(UNSUPPORTED RISK="MediumHigh") In the past I've run both single and multi-database
model ArcSDE instances in a single SQL-Server instance, but the only way I could get it to
work was to shutdown the multi-database service, detach the 'sde' database, do my new
instance management, then re-attach 'sde' and re-start its application server process.
(/UNSUPPORTED)

- V

[DaveOrlando]

Thanks for the reply,

I have another possible solution that I would like to run by you.

I have a new SQL/SDE server that I have rebuilt an ortho database (~200GB). I can't use the new box in a production environment yet, but the orthos are better in general due to renaming and better compression etc so......... on my old box (after copying and attaching the orthos to SQL) could I use some of the sdetable commands to properly remove all references to the old orthos and then re-register the new orthos?

sdetable delete/create, unregister/register? is this a scenario to use those commands?

Dave

[VinceAngelo]

I've done some pretty exotic things to transfer large rasters in the past, including
a months long copy job over a slow an unreliable network link, but none of them
involved 'sdetable' for managing rasters.  It may be theoretically possible to use
database tools to transfer the raw binary data, but I've never been forced to try.

Using modern hardware, I did a full-on copy of a terabyte of JPEG-compressed
(15-25Tb transfer) in under 40 hours.  For 200Gb, you may just be better of
copying with a drag-and-drop approach.

- V

[DaveOrlando]

Okay, I will to copy (drag & drop) in ArcCatalog, my new set back to my old server. I just want to avoid having to create the rasters from scratch and using the 'create resater dataset' and 'load' procedures because that is what I have just spend the last week doing on my new box.

I was hoping to just detach the ortho database in sql, reattach it to my old box and somehow have SDE recognize the data. Guess not...

Thanks again.

[VinceAngelo]

If you had been using the single database model, it probably would have been as simple as detach, copy,
reattach (this isolation is one of the critical benefits of that model).  The inability to rename databases
becomes a key factor when trying to prepare for such transfers.

- V