SDE - Database Design

[gismoe]

I need some tips how to get my data organized very well in a sde so that you don�??t loose track in hundreds of feature classes.

Yes it is possible to use Feature Datasets but somehow this is not enough. I have to divide thematically (energy supply, ground-contaminated land, terrain modelling, base map, historical monuments, aerial photos, and so on) and assign privileges.
Additionally there is a possible target to design Topology rules.

Until now we worked with PGDBs and we were able to group the data in PGDB and Feature Datasets. Like folders in a file system.

But how do you do this in the SDE?

[AlexanderDorofeev]

you can use several sde instances

[VinceAngelo]

Databases have an inherently "flat" organization. This is one of their strengths, since there
are significant performance benefits to not being able to "lose" a table in an arbitrary folder
organization. Esri honors this external design constraint with the ArcSDE interface -- there
is just one SE_table_list() function.

Therefore, you have three sources of control:
+ Database instance
+ Database user (schema)
+ Table name

Feature datasets should only be used to manage objects which will be edited togther
(even though it is common, there are serious penalties for using FDS as a simple folder).

Since Oracle doesn't have a "multi-database" paradigm, Esri engineered "schema geodatabases"
to isolate all the tables for a given user within an instance. Using this construct can also
mean more connections, since accesses to the different schemas all require their own
connections.

I generally use table owner to reflect the provider or geographic extent, then use underscores
to partition the name by theme (and I tack on the map scale and geometry class as suffixes):

C:\Temp>  sdelist -o table
 
ArcSDE 9.3 Table Listing Utility         Tue Sep 21 11:28:48 2010
------------------------------------------------------------------------
eval93.europe.admin1_100k_a
eval93.europe.cities_100k_p
eval93.europe.country_100k_a
eval93.europe.rail_100k_s
eval93.europe.railstations_100k_p
eval93.europe.roads_100k_s
eval93.usa.admin1_100k_a
eval93.usa.admin1_1m_a
eval93.usa.admin2_100k_a
eval93.usa.admin2_1m_a
eval93.usa.airport_100k_p
eval93.usa.cities_100k_p
eval93.usa.cities_1m_p
eval93.usa.hydro_100k_l
eval93.usa.hydro_1m_l
eval93.usa.rail_100k_l
eval93.usa.roads_100k_l
eval93.usa.roads_1m_l
eval93.usa.roads_500k_l
eval93.world.admin1_100k_a
eval93.world.cities_1m_p
eval93.world.country_100k_a
eval93.world.country_5m_a
eval93.world.gazateer_100k_p
eval93.world.nightlights_5km
eval93.world.wsi_earth99_4km
26 tables found
 

- V