Working with historical markers

A historical marker is a named moment in time that you create in ArcMap. Creating historical markers makes it easier for you to connect to specific moments and also to navigate between moments for viewing and analysis. Once you have created a historical marker, it becomes available within the Geodatabase Connection Properties dialog box in the Catalog window and the Change Version and Geodatabase History Viewer dialog boxes in ArcMap. When selecting a historical marker in any of these dialog boxes, you will connect to the historical version defined by the historical marker.

These are some tips on historical markers:

• All users have privileges to create, modify, and delete historical markers.
• The DEFAULT historical marker is a reserved name and cannot be deleted or renamed.
• If you delete or rename a historical marker that is currently in use in another ArcMap session, you will lose your data sources in the second session.

You can create historical markers based on important dates and times using either the Historical Marker Manager button on the Geodatabase History toolbar in ArcMap or from the Historical subtab of the Versions tab on the Geodatabase Administration dialog box.

The Historical subtab

You can create, delete, and edit historical markers from the Historical subtab of the Versions tab on the Geodatabase Administration dialog box. This dialog box is opened from the database connection in the Catalog tree, or by clicking the Version Manager button on the Versioning toolbar.

To create a historical marker, right-click inside the historical versions list and click New Marker.

The New Marker dialog box appears.

You can give your new marker a name and specify the database date and time you want the marker to represent.

The Historical Marker Manager

Historical Marker Manager is accessed from the Geodatabase History toolbar. To enable the Historical Marker Manager button on the Geodatabase History toolbar, select a workspace from the Source tab in the table of contents.

Historical Marker Manager works in a similar manner as the Historical subtab of the Versions tab on the Geodatabase Administration dialog box. You can view a list of all historical markers that have been created, as well as rename or remove them and edit the point in time to which they refer.

To create a new historical marker from the Historical Marker Manager dialog box, click the New button and specify the name and the time stamp of the marker.

To edit the properties of a historical marker from Historical Marker Manager, click the Edit button. You can then change the name and the time stamp associated with the selected historical marker.