I have an old pc at work which has been used to serve a large aerial Photo. I can only imagine that this was done due to lack of space. I have now found 5 other sde files on the server. I have no idea how to read these files, and don´t know what they actually do. I always use direct connect so I imagine this has something to do with a 3 tier connection.
Can anyone tell my what sde files do and why they might possibly be saved on this PC?
Best Answer
.sde files are files that store database connection information. Each of the connections in the image below are from saved .sde files:
They store information such as the instance name, the user you are connecting as and whether the connection uses database or windows authentication.
You may have some .sde files that are no longer used from an old install of ArcGIS. If you don't use the database connection anymore, it is completely fine to delete them as they are fairly trivial to remake in ArcCatalog/ArcMap.