Topology tips

Available with Standard or Advanced license.

The following tips can help you when using geodatabase topologies.

Proposed topology design testing

Use a file or mobile geodatabase with a copy of your feature class data to test your topology design. A copy is important because you will try to validate against your real data and see if your topology design works well. Validate will cluster coordinates and make changes to your underlying geometry. Some initial designs may not work as you expect. Ensure that you have a copy of your original data before you test.

If you have an enterprise geodatabase used by many in your organization, be aware that you have less flexibility to change the schema without taking your system offline for the changes. Schema changes can only be made to a topology when no other users are editing or viewing the topology or the data contained within the topology.

During tests

Work with your data to ensure that your design makes sense. For example, create the proposed rules, validate your topology, and use the editing environment to find and fix a number of example errors discovered during validation.

Try alternative rules. Work to develop a better understanding of how the topology rules will best function in your specific situation.

Once you decide on a design, you can test it as part of your production schema. You can save your topology rules and definitions for reuse later in other geodatabase schemas.

Schema locking

An exclusive lock is required on all the input feature classes when building a topology. If any of the input feature classes have a shared lock, the topology will not be built.

If any of the feature classes in a topology have a shared or exclusive lock, that lock is propagated to all the other feature classes in the topology.

Topology errors

Topology errors are discovered and recorded as features when you validate your topology.

For example, polygon-on-polygon areas are often reported as polygons or lines that show the errors. Line and point feature areas are typically recorded as lines and points.

You can view these as layers in the map and focus on each issue to correct it.

Read more about editing topology in ArcGIS Pro.