Latest Contributions by JoshuaBixby

Thomas, Thanks for the reply, and I will definitely work on documenting a couple of use cases for you in the coming weeks. I work for a large, de-centralized organization with a large, centralized data center.  SDE is an integral part of that data center environment with hundreds of geodatabases for hundreds of geographically distributed branches/offices housed in one location.  Although SDE is centrally deployed, it is managed and used in a de-centralized fashion.  For the local branch/office people, such as myself, that are in charge of managing their respective geodatabase, educating casual GIS users and local management is crucial.  Branch/office SDE administrators wear numerous other GIS-related hats, and GIS teacher and evangelist are two of them. From my perspective, the educational value of the of the Version Lineage functionality is sufficient to warrant its continued support in Esri's product line.  But if educational value isn't sufficient for some, I believe there is organizational value to the tool.  Visualizing how states are created and managed helps an organization understand how different program areas interact with and utilize geospatial data.  I hope to provide a couple of explicit examples of where visualizing Version Lineage brings business value to an organization. ... View more

I am all for improving the tools used to administer a geodatabase, but I think removing the Version Lineage Viewing capabilities is a poor call.  A handy, visual tool can be used for so many different needs/situations that removing it because 3 specific situations have better tools seems hasty. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I just got cursed with looking through thousands of lines of verbose logs to comprehend what can be visually communicated in a diagram or two.  Getting access to actual text messages, through verbose logging, is very important, but it doesn't obviate the need for good visualization tools. ... View more

I can't say it directly answers your question, but it might be worth your time to look over the Editing Sql Server without ArcSDE thread in the ArcGIS Desktop forum. ... View more

Tom, thanks for the more in-depth explanation of what occurs during a connection and what changed in 10.1.  I was generally aware of the differences between Oracle client libraries and Esri direct connect libraries, but I wasn't sure of how they interacted, especially in 10.1.  My questioning and frustration were in earnest; I was trying to understand what changed in 10.1 and why I was seeing certain behaviors. Your statement, "we only have 1 Esri library used to make the connection (which is based on Oracle 11g libraries)," is the most informative for me, and it will be good to communicate the Oracle 11g part of that statement to our organizations IT architects. ... View more

Seeing that the Oracle client choice is supposed to be automatic at 10.1, and the error message I received is the red herring discussed in another thread, I guess it is likely ArcCatalog tried both Oracle clients (10g and 11g), failed with both clients (SDE 9.2 isn't supported anymore), and then only presented one error message to the end user. If there is one suggestion to come out of this experience for me, it would be that more descriptive error messages would help clear the fog for end-users and speed troubleshooting for Esri Support. ... View more

The behavior must have changed for 10.1.  I have a machine with Oracle 10g and Oracle 11g clients installed, and both clients are fully functional.  When I try to make a connection to SDE 9.2, I get the following error:[INDENT]Database Connection Failed to connect to the specified server.  Do you wish to continue? ArcGIS 9.2 geodatabases do not support direct connect using Oracle 11g clients.  Please use the Oracle 10g client or the application server. [/INDENT]Ignoring the fact that 10.1 connections to 9.2 are not supported anymore, how does one use the Oracle 10g client if there is no place to specify an Oracle client version when making a connection? ... View more

The previous table of results for 9.3.1 is identical for our machines with ArcGIS 10.0 installed on them. ... View more

ArcGIS simply makes the call to the Oracle client which would be the first one in the library path as the DLL is loaded. I haven't had a chance to test with ArcGIS 10.0 or 10.1, but I just don't believe the situation is so with ArcGIS 9.3/9.3.1.  On our organization's machines that are configured with Oracle 10g and 11g clients and ArcGIS 9.3.1, it seems ArcGIS is looking for specific Oracle clients and not just the first Oracle client in the path. The behavior on our machines is: [INDENT]System PATH           SDE direct connect string    Result 10g path;11g path  sde:oracle10g                    Connection Succeeded 10g path;11g path  sde:oracle11g                    Connection Succeeded 11g path;10g path  sde:oracle10g                    Connection Succeeded 11g path;10g path  sde:oracle11g                    Connection Succeeded 10g path                  sde:oracle10g                    Connection Succeeded 10g path                  sde:oracle11g                    Failed:  Server library could not be loaded 11g path                  sde:oracle10g                    Failed:  Server library could not be loaded 11g path                  sde:oracle11g                    Connection Succeeded[/INDENT] If ArcGIS was simply looking for the first Oracle client in the system  path, then errors would be generated if the SDE direct connect string  called a different Oracle version than the first one in the system path. ... View more

The example in my earlier post isn't hypothetical, it exists for ArcGIS 9.3.1.  I realize ArcGIS 10.1 won't connect to SDE 9.2; my question was really about the larger issue of specifying Oracle clients or libraries.  If Esri has added code for the database connection to " automatically figure out which direct connect driver to use", then that is what I needed to know because I could not find documentation that explicitly stated that information. Prior to ArcGIS 10.1, in the not-so-distant past, the user had to specify different clients or libraries on one machine.  Automatic is good, as long as it works.... ... View more

It is common in our organization for GIS staff, and occasionally other GIS users, to have 2 versions of Oracle client on their machines:  Oracle 9i and Oracle 11g.  The need for 2 Oracle clients is driven by non-GIS reasons; however, depending on which SDE instance people connect to, the direct connect strings vary.  For example, the two most common direct connects are:      SDE:ORACLE9i:LEGACYINSTANCE      SDE:ORACLE11G:INSTANCE Since the LEGACYINSTANCE has SDE 9.2 SP6, Oracle 11g client cannot be used to connect from ArcGIS Desktop 9.3/9.3.1. It could very well be that both connections are using the Oracle 11g client since it is the first Oracle client in the system's path.  I guess that is a question for Esri.  If that is the case, i.e., both use the same Oracle client, then my original question should have been:    How does one specify different Oracle direct connect libraries in the Database Connection? ... View more

And thank you for providing additional information to clarify the situation. ... View more

It was the fact that 10.0 was connecting that was throwing me off.  Accepting that ArcGIS Desktop 10 direct connects using Oracle 11g to SDE 9.2 should not work but do, the behavior of 9.3/9.3.1 and 10.1 make sense. Thanks. ... View more

OK, bear with me on this one.... I understand why 11g server DLLs were created for SDE 9.3 and later and not SDE 9.2 or earlier.  That being said, I am trying to understand why I can direct connect using Oracle 11g client in ArcGIS Desktop 10 to SDE 9.2 but why I can't direct connect using Oralce 11g client in ArcGIS Desktop 9.3/9.3.1 to that very same SDE 9.2?  Is the fact it works in ArcGIS Desktop 10 a bug, i.e., it works but it shouldn't really work, or was there a change in support between ArcGIS Desktop 9.3/9.3.1 and ArcGIS 10? The situation I am seeing: [INDENT]ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1 Oracle 11g Direct Connect to SDE 9.2  -->  Doesn't work ArcGIS Desktop 10 Oracle 11g Direct Connect to SDE 9.2     -->  Works ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 Oracle 11g Direct Connect to SDE 9.2  -->  Doesn't work [/INDENT]From everything said in response to my original question, none of the above scenarios should work, right? [INDENT] [/INDENT] ... View more

I did come across the Help page that shows 10.1 is not compatible for direct connects to SDE 9.2.  That being said, if backwards compatibility for 3 versions is an Esri standard design, why doesn't ArcGIS 9.3.1 SP2 support direct connect using Oracle 11g client to SDE 9.2 SP6 but ArcGIS 10.0 SP2 does?  ArcGIS 9.3.1 is a whole lot closer to 9.2 than 10.0. ... View more