Geodatabase maintenance

There are a few geodatabase maintenance tasks that must be performed on a regular basis to help preserve the database and its existing performance levels. Most of them are standard maintenance you would perform for any database management system, such as database backups and updating database statistics. Others, such as compression and synchronizing geodatabase replicas, are specific to geodatabases.

The following are some maintenance tasks required for enterprise geodatabases:

• Database backup and recovery—The data stored in your geodatabase must be protected from loss or corruption. To achieve this, the database administrator makes backups—periodic copies or snapshots of the database. The database administrator must also be able to use these backups to recover the data in the event of hardware failure or data corruption.
• Update statistics—As the data and components within the geodatabase change, table and index statistics become outdated. This is a problem because the database uses the statistics to process queries from client applications. For this reason, database statistics must be updated periodically.
• Compress versioned geodatabases—As edits are made to a geodatabase that uses traditional versioning, the number of states and rows in the delta tables grows, slowing database performance. Compressing the geodatabase removes the states that are no longer referenced by a version and can move rows in the delta tables to the base table.
• Synchronize replicated data with parent geodatabase—If your site has field-workers or branch offices that work with replicas of the geodatabase, you will need to move the data into and out of the main database and manage the replicas.
• Upgrade the geodatabase—You will periodically update to newer versions of ArcGIS software to take advantage of new functionality. After you update your software, you can upgrade the geodatabase.