Enterprise geodatabases are collections of tables, views, and stored procedures inside a database management system (DBMS). Microsoft SQL Server is one such DBMS in which you can store your geodatabase.
You can create a geodatabase in your existing SQL Server database and continue to store your nongeodatabase data alongside geodatabase data. You can view and publish both types of data in ArcMap, but be aware of the following:
- Geodatabase data can be edited in ArcMap but database data cannot.
- If your database contains geodatabase system tables, ArcGIS considers it a geodatabase. Therefore, even if you are connecting to tables that are not registered with the geodatabase, ArcGIS client and geodatabase release compatibility rules still apply.
- If your database contains a geodatabase, feature classes must be registered with the geodatabase before you can publish them in a feature service.
There are differences in how data is stored and accessed in the supported database management systems, which affect how you interact with the database and the geodatabase objects in it. For this reason, administration help topics have been grouped into sections based on the database management system. This section of the help provides information on administering an enterprise geodatabase in SQL Server. If you access a topic by way of the search, be sure you are reading the topic that applies to the database management system you are using.
If you are the geodatabase administrator, you need to know how to do the following:
- Set up a geodatabase: This subsection of the help contains instructions on setting up an enterprise geodatabase in SQL Server. It also includes information for advanced users on configuring the database to store geodatabase objects.
- Manage access to the geodatabase: This subsection discusses the logins, permissions, and connections needed to access the geodatabase.
- Maintain geodatabase performance: Maintenance tasks, such as backup and recovery, geodatabase compression, and database statistics updates, are described in this subsection. You need to understand and regularly perform these tasks to keep your geodatabase running efficiently and avoid downtime. This section also describes how to upgrade your geodatabase to take advantage of new functionality and fixes.