X-Ray for ArcCatalog Creates Corrupt Databases

[Corbinde_Bruin]

Hello all,

I've been experimenting with X-Ray for ArcCatalog 10.1 for a few weeks now. It's VERY temperamental.

I was convinced that, no matter how careful I was, I was unintentionally corrupting my own databases when creating fields or moving them around. I am now convinced, after repetitive testing, that X-Ray just creates corrupted databases.

The corruption I'm seeing is features that won't show up in ArcMap or ArcCatalog preview. Something about the features' geometry has been damaged. The features show up in the attribute table, but they don't show up on the map. This is behavior that I have observed in brand new file geodatabases created from an XML that I've moved fields in. I was very careful to cut and insert the rows in excel so that all the field information was preserved.

If anyone has information on how to correct this issue, I would greatly appreciate it. Could this possibly be an issue with something other than X-Ray?

- Corbin de Bruin

[MichaelVolz]

Corbin:

Are you sure its not the bug where there is file geodatabase corruption when writing to a network share as highly publisized on the ESRI support page:

http://support.esri.com/en/

[Corbinde_Bruin]

Are you sure its not the bug where there is file geodatabase corruption when writing to a network share as highly publisized on the ESRI support page:

I moved off the network for all testing done in the last 3.5 hours. I have also never had any of the problems described in that technical article when creating network share databases. I don't think my system has that hotfix. It was not mass deployed by Microsoft.

[MichaelVolz]

Have you tried using ArcGIS Diagrammer?  The SDE administrator at my organization uses this ESRI software when creating new feature classes in SDE.

[Corbinde_Bruin]

Mike and all,

I started using ArcGIS Diagrammer and it has great functionality. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to provide any of the metadata functionality that X-Ray for ArcCatalog does, and the metadata functionality is what i'm looking to take advantage of.

I've confirmed with further testing that the database is corrupted as soon as I open up an x-ray excel sheet from the 'X-Ray for ArcCatalog' add-in. I don't even have to save changes to the excel sheet. As soon as that happens, any database I create from that XML will be corrupted. The corruption can be seen very quickly because the feature dataset will have the wrong cordinate system. At this point, there is no way to fix the feature class's geometry.

[MichaelVolz]

Can you explain in detail exactly what metadata funtionality you are looking that X-Ray for ArcCatalog does not appear to have?

How about a dual environment workflow?  Use ArcGIS Diagrammer to create the schema for the new feature class.  Then import the xml file from this feature class into X-Ray for ArcCatalog so you can use X-Ray's better metadata creation tools.  Then import the xml for the metadata that you created in X-Ray for ArcCatalog to ArcCatalog after you have created the feature class from ArcGIS Diagrammer.

[SteveGrise]

Hi Corbin, did you set the spatial reference for X-Ray? It is quite simple - just select an existing dataset that you want to have for your Geodatabase, and under Options select "Use Spatial Reference".

I am guessing that you haven't set that, and the features are simply outside of the extent of the spatial reference that was used - I think web mercator is the default.

That's quite the sensational title for your forum post!

Steve