Chapter 6. Enterprise Geodatabases

In the previous chapters, we worked with file geodatabases. File geodatabases are easy to use, convenient, and portable. You can work with them in a completely disconnected environment. You can also transfer a file geodatabase with a map document in a thumb drive, work on it, and make changes. For personal use and work, file geodatabases work great.

However, they cannot fit your solution every time. There are cases where you need multiple users to access and edit data. You might need to view the geographic data from another computer on the network without actually copying the data to that machine. Then there is, of course, the security and integrity of the data. There is no access control on a file geodatabase; anyone with a hold on the file can do whatever they want with it. You don't know who deleted, edited, or modified the schema on a file geodatabase. When you find yourself in this situation, this is when you are in need of an enterprise geodatabase...

The benefits of the enterprise geodatabase

Although an enterprise geodatabase requires you to invest in the management and administration, the benefits can be highly rewarding. Enterprise geodatabases are built on top of relational database management systems such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2. These systems are powerful and are wired to sustain constant editing and multiple accesses. With enterprise geodatabases, you can do the following tasks:

• Set up access control

• Build a centralized geodatabase which can be accessed from multiple terminals

• Restrict certain users from viewing a feature class or table

• Restrict certain users from editing a feature class or table

• Restrict users from changing the geodatabase schema

• Edit tracking to know who added a new feature or edited an existing one

In the next section, we will start with the installation of Microsoft SQL Server Express 2012 Service Pack 1.

Setting up a Microsoft SQL Server Express geodatabase

SQL Server Express is a lightweight, free database management system that is provided by Microsoft. We are going to use it for our enterprise geodatabase. For the production environment, you will need something stronger than this database, such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, or PostgreSQL. For the purpose of demonstration, we will use SQL Server Express. It is a good test case as it's easy to set up and use, and since it's a Microsoft product, it integrates well with ArcGIS.

System requirements

Before we start, we will need a new machine to work on. This will be our geodatabase server. You can use the machine you are working on now, but I recommend that you use another machine to see the complete benefits of enterprise geodatabases. A virtual machine with 2 GB RAM, 50 GB of hard drive space, and either a 64-bit Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or higher is recommended. I'm running on a 2 GB Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 virtual machine...

Working with an enterprise geodatabase

We can start working on our geodatabase after we have successfully created it. In this section, we will add some database users, create a geodatabase connection, and then migrate a file geodatabase to the new enterprise geodatabase.

Adding users

Now that we have successfully created the geodatabase, it is time to create some users. We will use these users to connect later. To create a user on the database, perform the following steps:

1. Connect to the database using SQL Management Studio.

2. Expand Security, right-click on the Logins node, and then click on New Login.

3. In the New Login form, type robb in the Login name field.

4. Select SQL Server Authentication and type the password for robb.

5. Uncheck the Enforce password policy checkbox so that we can use simpler passwords.

6. In the Default database drop-down list, select sdedb. Don't click on OK yet; we still have to map robb to sdedb so that the user is able to access the database. This is illustrated in the following...

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 remote 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 access control to your new enterprise geodatabase.

This is the end of the book; let's recap what we have done during the course of this journey. We started with learning the concept of geodatabases. You might...