Does historical data persist when unregistering and then re-registering a feature class?

[Simon_GIS]

Hello,

When I temporarily unregister a feature class as versioned in ArcGIS Pro and then later re-register it as versioned, do I still have access to all of its historical data after re-registering?

Best regards

[RobertKrisher]

The short answer is that when you unregister the data as versioned the only thing that is kept in the table is the contents of the default version of your geodatabase. All history and un-posted edits will be lost. In the case of traditional versioning this is the A and D tables, in the case branch versioning this is all the historical rows and rows in non-default versions in the business table. I'm assuming you're not asking about non-versioned archiving and a historical archive.

Which type of versioning? By history do you mean a separate historical archive, or the history you get with something like branch versioning?

[Simon_GIS]

Thank you for your reply.

In my scenario I'm using branch versioning.

You are correct in your assumption about the archiving. My question is about the history that is created through the branch versioning and whether this history persists through unregistering and re-registering as versioned.

[Jeremy_Hayden]

Hi Robert. I just wanted to drill down a little further into your answer as you eluded to the possibility that the type of history may sway the answer 🙂 If we are asking about archiving which can be independent of versioning, can this be, or is this persisted, through unregistering and then re-registering as versioned? Assuming all versions are posted, and we only have the default version in play, and all we are concerned with is losing the archiving history.

[RobertKrisher]

@Jeremy_Hayden If the data is registered as versioned and you unregister it as versioned, then you will lose all your history. Non-versioned archiving uses a separate mechanism and should not be confused with the Archiving used by Branch Versioning.

I don't deal with non-versioned archiving regularly enough for me to want to commit to the specifics of its behavior on a public forum, but since this is outside the scope of your question I'll leave it alone for now.

[RobertKrisher · Accepted solution]

It will be lost. So you will want to make a backup of it before unregistering the database as versioned (preferably a full database backup that includes any information from system tables/indices).