Files
Purpose:
To read all possible schema elements from an ESRI Geodatabase XML Workspace Document.
Summary:
- Use the XML reader with feature paths to get detailed schema information at the dataset, feature class, and field levels.
- Dataset-level data includes domains and subtypes
- Also retrieves dataset metadata.
Approach:
To characterize the geodatabase schema, we can use an XML reader to parse an Esri Geodatabase XML Workspace schema document. You need to export the Esri Geodatabase XML Workspace document using the Esri tools in ArcCatalog as described here.
The XML reader is configured to match elements with the value 'Domain Subtype DataElement,' and flattening is enabled, yielding 3 source feature types: Domain Subtype and DataElement. The Domain and Subtype feature types list all domains and subtypes for your dataset, but not which tables or fields use them. For complete info per table, including a list of fields, types, and domains/subtypes used, refer to the records in the FeatureClasses and Feature Datasets destination feature types. Note that these have one record per table, with a list of fields for each table.
To get one record per field, a ListExploder is used to flatten out the lists. Also, AttributeKeeper helps eliminate superfluous attributes.
Usage Notes:
- If you want to read the schema from another type of geodatabase, you can just export it to an XML workspace document using ArcGIS.
- This does not require any data to work, so you can run it on an empty database
- The XML reader extracts a lot of information, much of which may be superfluous or redundant. Once you have the info you need, delete parts of the workspace you are not using to improve performance