Sending a large gis data through an email suggest ?

[PROBERT68]

So I have been thinking about this for some time this morning about how to send someone with a large GIS data.

I have googled on that topic but I was wonder if this would work. In the past, someone from the military base sent me a file geodatabase and then change the extension from .gdb to something else like .xxx or whatever. So, when I got it and then I change it back to .gdb back.

So if you have a really large GIS data and you need to send it to someone... What would you do ?

My thought was is to pull that large GIS data and open in ArcMap and then create it into Map package and send it to some through an email.

   1. Will that work if the map package compressed and make it through the email system ? What if the map package has  

      increase the file size ?

   2. Are there any pros or cons when you use it and send it to someone ?

   3. Are there others that can I use other than Map package ? I know about ftp, zip, 7zip and upload and download through           such as dropbox, or some other cloud storage to share with. I am aware about AGOL that too.

[PROBERT68]

Yes, I am aware of that as well. What I am trying to do here is to find out what others are doing with the large gis data to share. The Government doesn't use Dropbox or anything due to with security issues. The only thing they mention is the Cloudvault that allow us to share that with others.

Since I asked about this was because the person send me the data and that person had to break it down to several zip files.  I think 7-zip was able to do that in one .

For an email, our MS Outlook can allow us to send up to 10 MB

So, I thank you everyone for sharing and hopefully in the future maybe there will be better technology for that.

Take care all !

[AbdullahAnter]

What about Compact Geodatabase using ArcCatalog!

[PROBERT68]

Yeah that should work too but what about the shapefiles, CAD, etc so that is a different story.

[DanaNolan]

Re DOD sites, dropbox and similar sites are verboten, at DOD and a lot of places (I found this out when job searching, since I had a portfolio on one of these systems). There is a secure FTP site that is similar for DOD. Your DOD contacts can give you the URL. The site's limit is 2GB and 20 files. You do not have to have a DOD credential or email to receive files, but you may have to set up an account to send since you don't have the credential.

Re map packaging, I have found the results are often huge, for a lot of reasons. There is a Map Consolidate tool that is cleaner. It just won't keep the file paths working for the recipient the way a map package does. But it is easy enough for a GIS user to work around the broken links.