Creating a geodatabase in Oracle

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

You can use the Create Enterprise Geodatabase geoprocessing tool in ArcGIS for Desktop to do the following in an Oracle database:

• Create an sde user and default tablespace (400 MB).
• Grant the sde user privileges to create a geodatabase and drop database connections.
• Create a geodatabase in the database.

At a minimum, you must install and configure Oracle and install an Oracle client on the computer where ArcGIS for Desktop is installed before you run the Create Enterprise Geodatabase tool. If you will be running SQL queries against the default geometry storage type of ST_Geometry, you must also copy the ST_Geometry library from the DatabaseSupport directory of your ArcGIS client and place it on your Oracle server, update the libraries, and configure the Oracle extproc.

The following instructions explain how to create a geodatabase using the Create Enterprise Geodatabase tool. Alternatively, you could run a Python script or enable geodatabase functionality in a preconfigured Oracle database.

Steps:

1. Start ArcMap or ArcCatalog on the computer where the Oracle client is installed.
2. Open the Create Enterprise Geodatabase tool.

   You can search for or browse to this tool, which is located in the Geodatabase Administration toolset of the Data Management toolbox.

3. Choose Oracle from the Database Platform drop-down list.
4. Provide the information required to connect to the Oracle instance.
   • If you have already configured the Oracle client to use a TNS network alias, type the Net service alias in the Instance text box.
   • If you have not configured the Oracle client's network alias, provide the Oracle Easy Connection string in the Instance text box.

   See Database connections in ArcGIS for Desktop for a list of possible values.

You must connect to the database as a database administrator to create the geodatabase administrator and tablespace. Therefore, the Database Administrator text box is populated with the sys user name.
5. Type the sys user's password in the Database Administrator Password text box.
6. Type the name of the geodatabase administrator in the Geodatabase Administrator text box.
   • For a master sde geodatabase, the geodatabase administrator must be named sde. If a user with that name does not already exist in the database, the tool creates it and grants it the privileges necessary to create a geodatabase. If the user already exists, the required privileges are granted to it.
   • If you are creating a user-schema geodatabase, type the name of an existing user who will own the geodatabase. You must already have a master sde geodatabase before you can create a user-schema geodatabase. The tool grants the specified user the privileges necessary to create a geodatabase.
7. Type a password for the geodatabase administrator in the Geodatabase Administrator Password text box.

   If the geodatabase administrator you specified already exists in the database, be sure to type the correct password for the existing user; this tool will not change the password. If you are creating an sde user, the password you type is used when creating the sde user.

8. Specify a tablespace for the geodatabase administrator.
   • If you have a preconfigured tablespace to be used for the geodatabase repository, type its name in the Tablespace Name text box.
   • If you want the tool to create a tablespace for you, type a valid name in the Tablespace Name text box and the tool creates a 400 MB tablespace in the Oracle default location. If you do not type a tablespace name, SDE_TBS tablespace is created and set as the default tablespace for the sde user.
9. To specify an Authorization File, browse to and choose the keycodes file that was created when you authorized ArcGIS for Server Enterprise.

   This file is written to \\Program Files\ESRI\License<release#>\sysgen folder on Windows servers and /arcgis/server/framework/runtime/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/ESRI/License<release#>/sysgen on Linux. If you have not already done so, authorize ArcGIS for Server now to create this file.

10. Click OK to run the tool.

A log file for the geodatabase creation (GDBCreateGeodatabase<#>.log) is written to the directory specified for your %TEMP% variable on the computer where the tool is run.