I need help with writing a python script to automate data management. I have ArcMap 10.4. I receive three shapefile updates every day: line, point, and polygon. The shapefiles are updates, but there are some duplicate records in them from the previous update. This is my data management workflow every morning: I use ArcCatalog to "append" the points, lines, and polygons - so that I only have three shapefiles and not 3 X #days. For the "append", I import the shapefiles into a gdb (right click on the gdb and import). As feature classes, I right click on the gold version (the one that I append the updates to) and select load>load data. And that is how I append the updates for the three layers. I've found that this is much faster than using the geoprocessing append tool. Then I run the Delete Identical tool to delete the duplicates records (I have an enterprise global ID in the attribute table).
A script that automates this workflow would save me a ton of time. Any ideas?
You might want to create a model to emulate the workflow, exactly how you have described it. From there you can export it to a python script. Just be aware that sometimes the export to python isn't a perfect process. At any rate, if you create the model first, you will at least get the logic in place, and then you can worry about python later...