Latest Contributions by DavidGifford

This really is a no brainer. Why would you need to create a new folder just to save your aprx? It's a bit of a pain to save the aprx, close Pro, go to file explorer, move the aprx then delete the folder created by Pro. ... View more

Vince, Nate's reasons for registering a view are exactly mine too. How do you suggest we do these things with a view without being able to register them? Let's not get into semantics about workflows etc, the fact is people use spatial views with Esri software. Please help me here and explain what "undefined behaviour" I could expect? All I'm trying to do is find an alternative to the sdetable -o create_view or sdelayer -o register command. Regards -David ... View more

Without providing detailed specific examples, we use spatial views (and I include materialised views as well as standard views) from a simple join (for example a look up table to point/line/poly feature classes) right through to incorporating st_geometry functions including st_buffer, st_intersects etc. Sure I can do a join using layer files, or build python scripts and create scheduled tasks to do my geoprocessing, but that's nowhere near as elegant (or simple) as doing it at the database level. I really don't know what else we as users (and customers) need to do to convince Esri Inc of the importance of being able to register views with the geodatabase. And I'm still baffled as to why it was taken out. Regards -David ... View more

I've been watching the spatial view discussion with quiet amusement, hoping that Esri would come to the rescue at the 11th hour and with the release of 10.3 and make it possible to register a view with the geodatabase again. I was wrong, and my faith has been shattered. Still can't believe that they got rid of something so important that's been around for at least 13 years that I know of. Shame. But here's how it can be done using an Oracle database (must be similar for other flavours), I'll automate it eventually, just need to work out how to generate layer_id and object_id from stored procedures. I also did it in 10.1 I'm guessing it'll work in 10.3, if you try it let me know. Create feature class with same name and schema as the new view (this'll generate the object and layer ID's in SDE schema) Delete table using database tools (I used Toad). This keeps the SDE schema intact. Create view using SQL (once again I used Toad). Check in ArcCatalog, it should behave like a view created using command line including the ability to create and edit metadata. I also altered the view to add a new column, and the SDE schema updated accordingly in the column_registry table. We will however be keeping to SDE 10.1 for a while yet, even though we're moving Desktop and Server to 10.3. Regards -David ... View more

Shp2sde has (had?) the reject output option, where any shapes that weren't "right" would be written to an output shapefile. Really useful for large datasets when importing to SDE. If something similar could be done for Feature Class to Feature Class (maybe outputting the rejects into the same format as the input feature class) this would save users a lot of time. FC to FC currently just writes rejects to a text file listing the OID's which is almost useless in a large dataset. I have this listed in ArcGIS Ideas (http://shar.es/U3csA). Regards -David ... View more

Don't use Bentley Microstation much these days, but just installed the latest version and it handles GeoPDF's as a reference file. Quite useful! The PDF was generated using ArcMap.... ... View more