New 1TB Feature Datasets Geodatabases in ArcGIS 9.2

With the release of ESRI ArcGIS 9.2 there is a new type of Geodatabase becoming available.

The File Geodatabase breaks the 2GB limit a personal geodatabase (.mdb) has.

Compressing a file Geodatabase reduces file size upto 25%

This is important for small businesses that use ArcGIS but due to cost cannot afford ArcSDE software, licencing and the workers to administrate a DBMS.

Advantages on a File Geodatabase are:-

• 1TB (TeraByte) for each dataset. Each file geodatabase can hold many datasets
  Each feature class can scale up to hundreds of millions of vector features per dataset.
• Cross-platform on Operating Systems
• Operating file system of security
• Single user and small workgroups control, many readers (no lock file) one writer operator
• Uses a very efficient data structure that is optimized for performance and storage
• ESRI Recommend it over personal geodatabases.
• ESRI Recommend compressing Feature Datasets after importing from personal geodatabases.

So is the Personal Geodatabase dead?