At work we are using ArcGIS 10.1 for fairly simple spatial data. We don't use the more advanced items such as topology that are available in Arc. We have a couple SQL Server databases for other kinds of data and have built some tools for taking that data and visualizing it in Arc. There is some data that we use a File Geodatabase for that I want to put into SQL Server, so that it can be more closely tied to the other data we have, and so that when we have 2 or 3 people working in different parts of the database, it doesn't lock the whole database from editing (like the File Geodatabase we are using now does).
However, at the moment we don't have an Arc Server license, so although I can connect to the data, I can't edit it through Arc. I have looked at other topics on here about SQL Server Spatial and Arc (this one for example), but I haven't found out how to successfully edit SQL Server data without a license.
My guess is the process would look something like this
- create a local copy of the features I want to edit (maybe as shp files, or a file geodatabase)
- edit as necessary
- use external python libraries to delete the original features on the server
- use shp2sql to upload the edited features
I feel like there must be tools that do this already, but maybe not for the price we want to pay. An Arc Server license has been talked about here, but I have no idea when it will actually be implemented, so I don't want to hold my breath. I know that there are other platforms that would be perfect for this, like QGIS, but that would be harder to convince people of than getting an Arc Server License.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Best Answer
We use SQL Spatial native data for 90% of our spatial analysis.
Our catch is we have to edit the data in a Geodatabase then use FME Workbench (through our Data Interoperability Extension that comes with our ESRI enterprise license agreement) to move the data into SQL Server as native spatial data.
[EDIT] The ability to edit spatial data within ArcMap gives all the editing capabilities of that software. This to me is important as keeping the SQL Server / Microsoft / ArcGIS technologies together works best for consistency, support, etc.
FME simply bridges that gap, and gives us Spatial ETL solutions that neither Microsoft nor ArcGIS provide on their own.
I started looking at how to use a server solution, but it wasn't going to work basically due to the fact that I needed Server to edit native SQL spatial data. Another consideration at the time, and I don't know where this ended up because I stopped looking, was if the 'feature data service' was going away or not...
I wrote some more info on how we use FME to update our SDE, but this can easily apply to updating a production SQL environment as well: What is the best way to update a production ArcSDE database from staging?