[GIS] Delete a feature data set in SDE 10 programmatically

Question

Is there a way to delete a feature data set and all of its feature classes programmatically either by using custom code or pre-existing command line tools?

There is a tool provided by SDE called sdetable.exe but i'm not sure if this will do the trick.

My feature data sets are setup in ArcSDE via scripts which call a custom executable that imports XML workspaces. I'd like a way to delete the feature data sets that the XML workspaces import because when I re-run the scripts I get things like this:

Underlying DBMS error [ORA-00972: identifier is too long

(VITD.Surface_Drainage_Channel_Area_1)]

The '_1' is appended because there is already a feature class named Surface_Drainage_Channel_Area. So I'd like to have my scripts first drop the VITD feature data set and all of its feature classes before importing my XML workspace XML document that creates it.

Answer 1

sdetable (like all SDE command line tools) does not recognize/understand the Geodatabse. Because a feature dataset is a geodatabase object, you cannot use sdetable to delete it.

You'll need to stick with an ArcObjects based client to do a clean delete. The easiest way would be to use the delete geoprocessing tool.