Personal geodatabases and editing (Defense Mapping)

With ArcMap, there are three types of geodatabases that can be used for data storage: file, personal, and ArcSDE. File and personal geodatabases are smaller types that support single users and small workgroups, while ArcSDE geodatabases support multiuser editing. See Types of geodatabases for more information.

Typical editing scenarios within Esri Production Mapping involve storing and editing large numbers of features. When data is stored in a personal geodatabase and edited with Production Mapping, there are some limitations you are likely to encounter.

• Calculating values on a large number of features can fail based on a number of factors, such as the number of fields, feature classes, or features in the geodatabase, or the hardware running the software. It is highly recommended that successful batch calculations be saved often.
• Memory consumption can be elevated until edits are saved or the edit session is stopped. When the memory consumption is high, edits may not be applied as expected.
• Personal geodatabases have a size limit of 2 GB. However, the effective limit before performance degrades is between 250 and 500 MB per Access database file.
• By default, ArcMap sets the maximum number of features that can be edited in a personal geodatabase to 9,500. If you are editing or performing batch calculations on more than 9,500 records in a personal geodatabase during an edit session, you will not be able to save your edits. You can increase this value using the ArcMap Advanced Settings utility.

For these reasons, it is recommended that you store data in a file or enterprise geodatabase when editing with Production Mapping. For more information on migrating to a file geodatabase, see Migrating to the file geodatabase. For more information on migrating to an ArcSDE geodatabase, see Creating an enterprise geodatabase.