A quick tour of geodatabases in Microsoft SQL Server

Enterprise geodatabases are collections of tables, views, and stored procedures inside a database management system (DBMS). Microsoft SQL Server is one such DBMS in which you can store your geodatabase.

You can create a geodatabase in your existing SQL Server database and continue to store your nongeodatabase data alongside geodatabase data. Starting with ArcGIS 10, you can view spatial tables in your database in ArcMap by defining query layers on the tables. Starting with ArcGIS 10.1, you can also directly view the spatial and nonspatial tables in your database.

NoteNote:

If your database contains geodatabase system tables, ArcGIS considers it a geodatabase. Therefore, client and geodatabase release compatibility applies to databases that contain geodatabase system tables even if you are connecting to tables that have not been registered with the geodatabase.

There are differences in how data is stored and accessed in the supported DBMSs, which affect how you interact with the database and the geodatabase objects in it. For this reason, administration help topics have been grouped into sections based on the DBMS. This section of the help provides information on administering an enterprise geodatabase in SQL Server. If you access a topic by way of the search, be sure you are reading the topic that applies to the DBMS you are using.

The "Geodatabases in SQL Server" section of the help is organized as listed here. Links take you to a topic in that subsection of the help.

8/21/2013