Latest Contributions by TimMinter

So, one possible answer is "109 is more in September than 107 is in July".  I'm good with that.  I retract my question and don't care to know anything more about why.  🌎   Happy Thursday, tim ... View more

Another approach to consider if your team or your administrators have access to Microsoft Active Directory is to create an Alias (CNAME) for the machine your SQL Server is on.  Something like this: IP:  <current IP> Server:  <current server name> Alias (CNAME): Geodata An event arises wherein you decide to migrate to a more recent SQL Server version.  You complete the migration, one step being to update the Active Directory entry for your Alias(CNAME): IP: <new IP> Server: <new server name> Alias (CNAME): Geodata The change propagates across your environment after a bit, and ta-dah, stuff works just like it did when you sorted out the whole migration process in sandbox, dev, and test environments. tim ... View more

good info @jcarlson .  It could work for me, but maybe not for others for whom I'm hacking a path through the underbrush.  Another idea I have, but have to review a bit before posting, is that GP tools should all work consistently and as documented: alone in a ModelBuilder model in a Python script exported from a ModelBuilder model in a "from scratch" Python script I've found several situations that I think break that continuum... but for another post at some point when I have time. thanks! tim ... View more

I like it, @KoryKramer !  If you all can complete and release my ideas faster than I can have and post them, then I think we're where we need to be 🙂 So, I'm at ArcGIS Pro 2.9.3 and ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9.1.  We don't deploy Esri dot zero releases, and it looks like AGP 3.0.x will require some planning and finagling to make the jump, so...  it will be awhile. Nice, tim ... View more

edit:  What is this, how you say, "ArcMap"?  I suppose my ArcGIS Pro Idea is related to this thread, but I don't see how it fits here in mid-2022. original: Open a table > right-click a field that interests me > View Field Metadata > opens the metadata at that field tag.     ... View more

Nice!  Thanks @KoryKramer! ... View more

Hi @John_Spence & @jsarthur, Good discussion above.  Under my standing "I really don't know anything" principle, I'd like to know more about the hugeness of the shrinking eGDB no-no.  If you can point me at some help documentation, technical articles, blogs, etc. that might be easiest.  Just chiming in with a few items: Usage - Vector feature classes, tables, relationship classes, feature datasets, time-enabled data, that sort of thing.  No or nearly no raster or other data types in the big (-ish) databases.  Relative to other data collections I've helped manage during my career, I don't consider these databases to be "heavily used" from the perspective of total number of requests over time and concurrent connections.  They are used enough that performance problems are noticed and communicated. Recovery model - 'Simple' for the databases we need to shrink.  We mostly use these as OLAP databases and just don't care about the logs much at all. Performance - ArcGIS Pro PerfTools suggests that things are going about as well as can be expected for object-relational handling of the data given our computing environment resources (storage, db servers, network, etc.).  We haven't noticed any unexpected negative performance effects related to shrinking the database.  During larger data loading activities, we expect and experience some performance hit as auto-grow does its thing.  This touches on why we shrink - one update we do loads ~600 million records as 'new' tables and feature classes, builds indexes, statistics, etc. over a fairly long time stretch.  In order to minimize availability impact to staff and systems, we switch out the 'old' with 'new' during a brief maintenance window, ensure everything is working as expected, then delete the 'old' object.  That leaves a bunch of unused storage that unnecessarily costs us money until the next update.  Maintenance - Yes, we regularly rebuild indexes, analyze, compress, etc. as needed.  We have a lot of truncate/append or simply append ETL activity as we move record updates into static schema in the eGDB. Metadata - Nice.  We've started to configure ArcGIS to not store GP processing history in the metadata, but not consistently across all machines that do the work.  Thanks for the link to that article.  We'll investigate to see about a cleanup and keep getting our house in order. Cheers, tim ... View more

HI Bill, Unfortunately, no.  I need a way to inject changed table schemas, including field order, into a relatively static enterprise geodatabase schema that uses db views to ETL data from an incoming spreadsheet that occults the source system schema (it shall forever be unknown to me/us) to a product set of enterprise geodatabase feature classes and tables that staff and various apps/systems use.  When the source system has schema changes that impact my ETL, I have to go and jiggle the staging tables that receive the spreadsheet content, ArcGIS-friendly tables with curated field definitions (and order), and the db views so that I don't have to change the schema for the product feature classes and views and bust a bunch of stuff.  Whew. My idea above would help because I could pop open the Add Fields (multiple) GP tool in a model, adjust the field definitions (and order), generate a schema that matches the source system changes, and carry on with the change.  As it stands, I can do that, but it takes days and thousands of clicks to set it up the first time.  When there are major source system changes, a fresh setup helps avoid errors.  If I could point the tool at the staging tables when setting up, then far fewer clicks would be involved and the opportunities for errors decrease. tim ... View more

Hi Edith, Concur!  I have one dataset with 7 feature classes and 7 tables that totals out at ~600m records.  I try to do most of my work in SQL Server, but have to head up to object-relational software land (ArcGIS) occasionally to do stuff.  Pokey slow, and in order to get anything done in human time requires very careful arrangement and application of computing resources and judicial use of ArcGIS functions. cheers, tim ... View more

Running ArcGIS Pro 2.7.3 as the 'geodatabase administrator' account, using "Enable Enterprise Geodatabase" GP tool after creating SQL Server 2016 database per the instructions here: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/geodatabases/manage-sql-server/setup-geodatabase-sqlserver.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_0CB5A7EBA7EB4F69AA7180F0FA84779E https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/geodatabases/manage-sql-server/privileges-sqlserver.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_48345263705D453984B45C73811C1C56 ...the GP tool finishes and reports success.   However, when I try to interact with the database connection, ArcGIS Pro tosses up: Sometimes, but not always, I can run ArcGIS Pro as the 'data creator' account and paste a feature class into the database. After completing this step, I can close ArcGIS Pro running as 'geodatabase administrator' account, then start ArcGIS Pro as 'geodatabase administrator' account and everything appears to be working correctly. Sometimes I get stuck here. Have any of you run into this, and do you have any ideas how to have a consistently pleasant and error free experience when enabling enterprise geodatabases? thx, tim ... View more