Enterprise Geodatabases - Learning ArcGIS Geodatabases - page 208

Summary
This was a lengthy and rich chapter full of practical exercises. Enterprise geodatabases are
an excellent choice when you have a multiuser environment. In this chapter, you learned
how to set up, configure, and fully build your own enterprise geodatabase. You have used
SQL Server Express as a relational database management system's backend, enabled re-
mote access, and configured a number of users. Then, you created your geodatabase on top
of the database instance. You then learned how to create a geodatabase connection using
ArcCatalog to the new enterprise geodatabase. You migrated your file geodatabase, which
you have authored during your journey through Learning ArcGIS Geodatabases , into a
fresh enterprise geodatabase. Finally, you assigned different privileges to each user and ac-
cess control to your new enterprise geodatabase.
This is the end of the topic; let's recap what we have done during the course of this journey.
We started with learning the concept of geodatabases. You might have noticed that we fo-
cused on file geodatabases and not the personal MS Access. The reason I made this de-
cision is because file geodatabases will have more support and you can work with them
even after a number of years, whereas personal geodatabases are being discontinued in the
next releases of ArcGIS because of their dependency on Microsoft Office 2003 32-bit and
their size limitation, which cannot exceed 2 GB. It has already been discontinued from Ar-
cGIS for Server, and I doubt that if you picked up this topic after three years, you will have
the option to use personal geodatabases.
In Chapter 1 , Authoring Geodatabases , we worked with a case study project called Bes-
taurants, created a geodatabase from scratch, added feature classes and attributes, and set
the spatial reference so that we project our data correctly. We edited the geodatabase and
populated these feature classes using ArcMap. In Chapter 2 , Working with Geodatabase
Datasets , we introduced new dataset types such as subtypes, domains, and relationship
classes and used them to make our geodatabase richer. Then, we completely remodeled our
geodatabase in Chapter 3 , Modeling Geodatabases , where we learned that our initial design
was a bit rigid and complex, so we simplified it using the UML visualization tool. We cre-
ated a completely new simplified Bestaurants geodatabase. Our geodatabase became sturdy
and consistent, and the client has been using it and adding features to it. That's why we had
to introduce some optimization tools in Chapter 4 , Optimizing Geodatabases , that will help
us maintain a good and healthy geodatabase. We have been using the graphical user inter-
face in ArcMap and ArcCatalog to work with our geodatabase; it was time to dive into
more advanced tools. This is when we introduced scripting in Chapter 5 , Programming
Geodatabases , where we used Python to programmatically work with geodatabases. Using