What this book covers

Chapter 1, Authoring Geodatabases, introduces the concept of geodatabases and how you can design and create one using ArcGIS for Desktop. The chapter discusses a project, Bestaurants, where you need to create a file geodatabase for the restaurants in Belize to help the client visualize them on a map.

Chapter 2, Working with Geodatabase Datasets, will bring in new requirements for the Bestaurants project where you will learn how to create feature classes, tables, and relations between datasets in the geodatabase you created in Chapter 1, Authoring Geodatabases.

Chapter 3, Modeling Geodatabases, will show you some flaws of the design used while creating the geodatabase in Chapter 1, Authoring Geodatabases. It will teach you how to remodel your Bestaurants geodatabase in a more elegant way. It will also show you how to cut down the number of datasets to reduce future maintenance on the geodatabase.

Chapter 4, Optimizing Geodatabases, is where you will be given some new tools to optimize your Bestaurants geodatabase now that it has been modeled elegantly. You will learn concepts such as indexing, compacting, and compressing, which will help you optimize your geodatabase queries and maintain a healthy geodatabase.

Chapter 5, Programming Geodatabases, will take you further along your Bestaurants geodatabase by writing Python scripts against it. It will also teach you how to use a model builder to combine different geodatabase tools to save a lot of time in administering and maintaining your geodatabase.

Chapter 6, Enterprise Geodatabases, introduces the concept of enterprise geodatabases, an upgraded version of a geodatabase that supports multiple user access, enhanced security, and higher availability. It will show you how to set up and configure your enterprise geodatabase from scratch using Microsoft SQL Server Express and migrate your existing Bestaurants geodatabase to the new geodatabase.