ArcSDE resources: how-to books, tutorials

[nrschmid]

Can anyone recommend any resources on this? I have worked primarily with ArcGIS Desktop for the past decade but want to brush up on my skills. I am looking for books that focus primarily on ArcSDE, not just a how-to GIS book or a reference manual.

Thanks-

[kpf]

Some of this will depend on what level of ArcSDE you want to learn more about. If you’re looking for information about Workgroup Geodatabases (link to description), then the online help (link to tutorial) is pretty good. I don’t have experience with this type of sde, but it looks like you perform all the administrative tasks through ArcCatalog.

If you’re looking for information about Enterprise Geodatabases (link to description), it’s a bit harder to find what you’re looking for (I’m not aware of any sde specific books or tutorials, for example). My (imperfect) suggestion would be to learn about one of the relational databases that works with sde. There are plenty of books and tutorials if you go this route. You’ll be able to learn a number of the administrative tasks you’ll need to perform (user permissions, database maintenance, creating indexes, etc), you’ll be able to improve you sql skills (if necessary), and you’ll become more familiar with general database concepts that turn up in the sde documentation. You can even start learning about how gis data behaves in a spatial database by experimenting with SQL Server Spatial, or PostGis (both of which are free). None of that is sde per se, but it should be helpful if you opt for some type of formal training, or get sde setup in a development environment where you can really play around with it.

Good luck, and please update when you figure our what you’re going to do.

[TerraSapient]

Were you ever able to find a good reference for this nrschmid?