Geodatabases in Oracle

Enterprise geodatabases are collections of objects—such as tables, views, and stored procedures—in a relational database management system. Oracle is one such database management system in which you can store a geodatabase.

You can create a geodatabase in an existing Oracle database and continue to store database tables and views (in other words, those not registered with the geodatabase) alongside geodatabase data. You can view and publish both types of data in ArcGIS Pro, but be aware of the following:

  • Geodatabase data can be edited in ArcGIS Pro when you access a database connection, but database data cannot. To edit database data, you must publish an editable web feature layer that references the data in your database.
  • If your database contains geodatabase system tables, ArcGIS considers it a geodatabase. Therefore, even if you connect to tables that are not registered with the geodatabase, ArcGIS client and geodatabase release compatibility rules still apply.

There are differences in how data is stored and accessed in each supported database management system, which affect how you interact with the database and the geodatabase objects in it. For this reason, enterprise geodatabase management help has been grouped into sections based on the database management system. This section of the help provides information on administering an enterprise geodatabase in Oracle. If you access a topic by way of the search, be sure you are reading the topic that applies to the database management system you are using.

If you are the geodatabase administrator, you need to know how to do the following:

  • Create a geodatabase in Oracle.
  • Manage connections to the geodatabase. Some of these tasks, such as creating users and granting database permissions, must be performed by the database administrator. Other tasks, such as monitoring, blocking, and dropping connections, can be performed by the geodatabase administrator.
  • Perform geodatabase maintenance tasks such as compressing the geodatabase if you use traditional versioning, updating statistics on geodatabase system tables, and upgrading the geodatabase to take advantage of new functionality and fixes.

Because an enterprise geodatabase is stored in a database, the database administrator must perform database maintenance tasks, such as creating and testing backups and upgrading the database.