Enabling archiving

Enabling archiving is similar to registering a dataset as versioned. For each dataset for which archiving is enabled, a new archive class is created. When enabling archiving, all attributes and all rows in the DEFAULT version of the dataset or object class are copied to the archive class. The time it takes to complete the creation of the archive class depends on the size of the dataset being enabled. The archive class has the same schema as the original dataset with additional date attributes gdb_from_date and gdb_to_date to record the timestamp for the effective lifespan of the archived row and a gdb_archive_oid attribute to uniquely identify each row.

archiving table

Representing the archive class as an independent feature class, as opposed to managing the historical rows in the delta table for the versioned table, means that the existence and size of the archive does not impact the efficiency of the database. Datasets can be unregistered as versioned without affecting or deleting the archive class. If a dataset is unregistered as versioned, the archive class becomes an object or feature class.

Once the dataset has had archiving enabled, all changes saved or posted to the DEFAULT version are additionally preserved in the archive class. You do not have the ability to append historical data to the archive class. Manually changing the archive class can lead to a corruption of you geodatabase archiving process.

Tips on enabling archiving:

Steps:
  1. To enable archiving, the data must be registered as versioned. See Registering data as versioned for instructions.
  2. Right-click the versioned dataset in the Catalog tree and click Enable Archiving.

Related Topics

7/30/2013