Compressing an enterprise geodatabase

This topic applies to ArcGIS for Desktop Standard and ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced only.

To maintain database performance, the geodatabase administrator must periodically run the Compress command to remove unused states and data from the geodatabase. You can do this from the database connection in the Catalog tree in ArcGIS for Desktop, or use the Compress geoprocessing tool or a Python script.

See the Compress tool topic for information on running it or a script. To run a compression operation from ArcGIS for Desktop, follow these instructions:

Steps:

1. Start ArcCatalog or ArcMap and connect to your geodatabase. Be sure to connect as the geodatabase administrator.
2. Right-click the database connection in the Catalog tree, point to Administration, then click Compress Database.
3. Click Yes to confirm that you want to run the compression operation on the selected geodatabase.