Latest Contributions by MarcoBoeringa

Karen, The interpolation tools in Spatial Analyst are really unsuited for anything but the most preliminary assessment. You really should start to delve into Geostatistical Analyst for anything requiring "scientific" or academic grounding, as Geostatistical Analyst offers far more and better tools, including cross validation and exploratory data analysis. These tools in Geostatistical Analyst will help you in finding out what might be "wrong" with your dataset, and what needs to be done to make the dataset suitable for interpolation (if at all possible!). Common issues I often see: - To small dataset (like trying to interpolate 7 points or so) - Non-continuous dataset / phenomenon measured, which violates the basic principal of continuity underlying the whole "interpolation" concept. Sometimes, you really shouldn't be interpolating data, but using other (statistical) methods to process your data, like using a program like SPSS or R. Quite often, people cling to the idea of "I must interpolate this data!", while their data may in fact be unsuitable... - Non-normal distributed data. Data may need to be transformed, e.g. by taking the log. Geostatistical Analyst, with its Exploratory Data Analysis tools, will help you in finding out if your dataset is suitable for interpolation, and help with possible transformation or other settings needing to be made before or during interpolation. You may find the document by Gregg Babish, that I linked in the below thread post, useful as a basis for better understanding interpolation techniques: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/95588-Simple-Kriging-question-please-help!!?p=339687&viewfull=1#post339687 ... View more

It would be helpful if you specified both your hard- and software environment including exact versions of software used, and statistics and data about the layer you are trying to access, like feature type (point, line, polygon), how many features (10k, 100M??) etc, and what you mean with trying to "load" the data in ArcMap: are you trying to load all of the data at full extent (which effectively renders the use of a spatial index useless), or are you properly accessing the data through well defined min/max display scales (properly limiting the number of features needed to be "loaded" to ArcMap at any given extent and point in time) ... View more

My goodness what a long and confusing thread! do you need to install ArcSDE? well, yes, no, and maybe. Here is the skinny I got out of all this mumbo-jumbo: IF you are at 10.2/10.2.1 YOU do not need to install ArcSDE and you will NOT be given an option to install ArcSDE because it will not be there. ArcSDE is gone! kaput! no more! As an addition to what Vince said: it would also be wise to refer to the ArcSDE Application Server, and the ArcSDE Command Line Tools instead of just generic "ArcSDE" in case you wish to refer to the components of the ESRI Geodatabase Framework that will no longer be available in the next major release. ArcSDE is far from gone as I tried to illustrate in the PDF document I referenced for you in the other thread you started, and Direct Connect implements all of the geodatabase functionality accessible through the ArcSDE Application Server, while the new Python tools and GUI components for geodatabase management in ArcGIS for Desktop attempt, at least partly, to cover the ArcSDE Command Line Tools functionality. Where they don't cover it yet, ESRI seems to actively work on this and seeking user input. ... View more

p.s. to move this thread to other forum, is there a way other than posting it again? Yes there is, I have moved it for you based on Steve's suggestion. Forums MVPs have basic moderation rights and can do this. ... View more

I don't know if it is a good replacement, but this ESRI tool: Calibrating ArcGIS Performance with PerfQAnalyzer: New Build Available for Download seems more recently maintained (recent update this month), and may do what you want. ... View more

I want to pass a SQL command, something like Select DOCUMENTATION from gdb_items_vw, to retrieve all the information about the metadata of the layer. But the difficulty is that this DOCUMENTATION field is CLOB type. I found this command that seems correct: SQL> select EXTRACT (XMLType (DOCUMENTATION), '/ metadata') as DOCUMENTATION from sde.gdb_items_vw where name = 'user_name.table_name'; ... but as my sde.gdb_items_vw table is empty, the query gives me 0 selected lines! So why this table is empty? Is that the right table to get metadata? Did you actually define / write metadata for the layers in your geodatabase??, or are you just interested in general Feature Class properties like extent, fields, projection etc., and have falsely assumed that ArcGIS automatically stores these as ESRI/ISO XML metadata in the gdb_items table as well? This is not the case, you need to, at the very least, activate the Metadata TAB in ArcCatalog once to have it write XML metadata to the gdb_item's metadata column (named "Documentation") for the selected Feature Class. Otherwise, the Documentation field will stay empty (Null) for the particular Feature Class you tried to query. All the other automatically maintained system data, like the Feature Class properties, is stored elsewhere in the geodatabase system tables. Other options: - Did you have a look at the Name column in the gdb_items tables. Is it really enough to just specify 'user_name.table_name'? E.g. in SQL Server, you need to write 'database_name.user_name.table_name' since SQL Server supports multiple databases per instance. But maybe you need to add 'instance_name' in Oracle? (I can't check it for you, since I don't have it running). - Some issue with the gdb_items_vw database view or the ArcSDE / Geodatabase repository. If that is the case, it starts to look like you may need to make an official support call for this with ESRI. And some examples are available here in the doc as well. For example: Example: Finding domain owners using SQL More detailed instructions can be found here: XML column queries ... View more

Maybe this thread: Feature Names in SDE Geodatabase and the comments therein of ESRI's Shannon Shields and others, can answer some of your questions. ... View more

I recently noticed something similar, with GUID type fields in Oracle. Using command-line tools results in a view with the same GUID types as the source tables. Using desktop results in a view with all GUID types converted to text. As GUIDs behave differently than text (importantly, what their respective string representation is), this is problematic. My suspicion is that the columns in the view created using desktop either do not get inserted into COLUMN_REGISTRY, or they get inserted with the incorrect types. The actual database type is char(38), so without an entry in COLUMN_REGISTRY (or similar) there'll be no way for ArcGIS to know that this is meant to be a GUID. I'm just continuing to use command-line tools to create the views, for the time being. John They certainly should not be inserted into the COLUMN_REGISTRY, as that is an ArcSDE System Table. The tool you are using - Create Database View - is nothing but a "button" or "skin" to access RDBMS database functionality. It is not part of the ArcGIS Geodatabase realm, and hence it would be bad if it inserted data into the COLUMN_REGISTRY. This may sound like a regression coming from the SDE Command Line tools, but this actually allows you to create (spatial) views in databases that are not "geodatabase enabled" and thus not "geodatabase aware", e.g. any "ordinary" non-GIS database you have on the shelves, like for customer data. In addition, these tools were not really (or not only) designed to replace the ArcSDE Command Line tools, but to fulfil other ArcGIS users' needs. Of course, you can do the same thing just as easy from your RDBMS management interface, like SQL Plus, SQL Server Management Studio etc, but this tool allows you to script it in Python using arcpy, or use it in ModelBuilder. It is probably confusing because ArcGIS now contains both tools and menu options acting against geodatabases only, and tools working in mixed or non-geodatabase RDBMS systems, something many users still need to get accustomed too... ... View more

I followed Deepti's advice from the following post: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/23833-how-to-create-a-multi-versioned-spatial-view That worked for me. It loads into Arcmap and contains the current data.   However, opening the resulting spatial view in arcmap takes about 2 minutes.  Once its loaded, a query will take a couple seconds so that's good.  This would be a good way to build thematic spatial layers but the slow performance in loading the table once in arcmap, is a major deficit.  Anyone have a suggestion to make it faster? Sonia What is the actual performance at the database side? I see a rather complex query with subqueries, is it actually performing when taking ArcGIS out of the equation? Another question: how big is this table, how many features are there, and what step takes 2 minutes? The calculation of the spatial extent, or simply dragging it to the TOC of ArcMap and waiting for some response? ... View more

@mboeringa2010  Thanks for your insight! Disabling the query governor did the trick. Apparently that had been enabled on this machine some time in the past for unknown reasons. Good to hear that solved the issue. You can mark certain posts as the answer to your question / started thread by using the check mark to the right of the post. This will help others find answered questions when they do a search here on the forums. ... View more

Joseph, You should correct the links, they error out with a 404... Interesting project by the way! ... View more

I wrote that you can't use ArcGIS tools to accomplish this. Correct, I didn't mean to apply otherwise, but I assumed the OP primarily wished to use the "ArcGIS Tools"... If the database supports this functionality, then a forum of the database in use would be a better place to get help.  You may need a great deal of geodatabase knowledge to avoid breaking ArcGIS functionality. Agree, trying to use domains and subtypes on "restricted" fields, is probably a scenario for a big headache... just to mention one... I think the solution Sol originally proposed, and you also mentioned, by setting up dedicated joins for fields with restrictions, and spatial views at the database side who's access can be managed by the RDBMS, and using Query Layers to access them, is the closest thing to a realistic solution of this. ... View more

If it is not supported by Esri, what then would be the usual procedure(steps) to follow to get this done? I mean to forbid the access for an SQL Server 2008 R2 Database user, to an attribute field table, which could contain sensitive information? Thank you. Vince already stressed this, you can't set permissions / privileges at the level of individual attribute fields of a Feature Class in an ESRI Geodatabase, you can set permissions / privileges (read or deny) for individual users to an entire Feature Class, including all its fields. To set permissions on a Feature Class, read the Help: What are user privileges? and especially: Granting and revoking privileges on datasets ... View more

Maybe this FGDC website, and the document referenced below, may be of some use: http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/geospatial-metadata-standards#nap Federal Geographic Data Committee Educational Resource: Preparing for International Metadata: http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/documents/preparing-for-international-metadata-guidance.pdf ... View more