Recommended traditional version administration workflow

To maintain good performance in a geodatabase containing traditional versions, there are a few key administrative tasks that should be run regularly. A recommended workflow for enterprise geodatabase administrators is to frequently reconcile and post, compress the geodatabase, then run the Analyze Datasets and Rebuild Indexes geoprocessing tools. This sort of routine maintenance can be set up to run nightly as a script or by building a model.

This topic discusses these administrative tools and how to make a model of this workflow. To see how you would build and run a nightly script of these tasks, see Using Python scripting to batch reconcile and post versions.

Note:

This workflow is specific to traditional versioning. Branch versioning does not have adds and deletes tables like traditional versioning and therefore does not require many of the same administration tasks described in this topic.

If you are unfamiliar with the tasks in this workflow or with ModelBuilder, first refer to the following help topics:

Reconcile and post

Before running the compress command, it is important to reconcile and post versions. There are several ways to run the reconciling and posting process. This topic focuses on the Reconcile Versions geoprocessing tool since this workflow includes building a model in ModelBuilder.

The reconciling and posting process merges edits between a version and any version that is the ancestor of that version, such as the parent or DEFAULT version. Child versions receive the edits made in the parent or DEFAULT version and vice versa. This process also allows ArcGIS to check for conflicts between edited versions. You can set up the Reconcile Versions geoprocessing tool to handle conflicts in favor of either the edit version or the target version representation, depending on your preference.

Compressing the geodatabase

As a geodatabase is edited over time, the adds and deletes tables increase in size. The Compress geoprocessing tool removes edits not referenced by a version and compresses edits common to all versions back to the business table, thereby increasing the performance of the geodatabase.

Note:

Good practice for achieving an effective geodatabase compress is to delete unnecessary versions after you post them. You can enable this option in the Reconcile Versions geoprocessing tool by checking the Post Versions After Reconcile and Delete Versions After Post options in the dialog box.

Rebuilding indexes

Your indexes may become fragmented after geodatabase compression. Running the Rebuild Indexes tool may therefore offer a small performance boost.

Running the Analyze Datasets tool

The Analyze Datasets geoprocessing tool is used to update statistics on datasets in the geodatabase. This tool updates the statistics of business tables, delta tables, and historical archive tables along with the statistics on the indexes associated with those tables. You should always update statistics after a compress operation.

The model

If you take all these geoprocessing tools and put them in a model in ModelBuilder, it should resemble the following:

Model of a recommended version administration workflow

To run this workflow as a nightly task, you can run these tools in a Python script and create a scheduled task in Windows.