BDS layers

What is a BDS Layer?

BDS (.bds) is a file extension that stands for Business Analyst data source. BDS layers are custom ArcGIS feature classes used exclusively throughout Business Analyst. Technically, a BDS layer is an XML wrapper that provides the following benefits:

Certain characters in field or table names are not supported in ArcGIS and not supported in Custom Data Setup. These characters include spaces, hyphens (such as in the term x-coord) brackets and other special characters. These limits enable ArcGIS to function with the maximum amount of data types.

Here are some suggestions:

4/8/2013