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Idaho Fish and Game

Repairing Broken Data Sources cont. & connecting to U:\GIS_IDFG.gdb

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The IFWIS shop has migrated all of our most useful GIS data to new geodatabases that will live in each region.  What does that mean?  That means that your GIS projects should be much faster to build and work with because regional users will be requesting data from a local geodatabase instead of a geodatabase sitting at headquarters.  The layers in the LayerFetcher tool are now all referencing the new geodatabase.  Within each region, the geodatabase is located at U:\GIS_IDFG.gdb.  Instead of referencing K:\IFWIS\SDE_Layers\SDE_Vector.sde to repair broken data sources, you should reference U:\GIS_IDFG.gdb.



In ArcMap, right-click a layer with a broken data source --> Data --> Repair Data Source...





Navigate to the U drive:





If you don't see the U drive in your Data Source directory, you need to make a new connection.  In the Data Source dialog, click the 'Connect to Folder' icon and navigate to the U drive.  In the GIS_IDFG.gdb, navigate to the corresponding feature class.  For instance, if you are repairing the 'Major Rivers' layer, navigate to 'Hydro_Stream_Idaho'. How did I know which feature class to navigate to?  You can figure out the name of the feature class you are looking for by looking at the 'Source' tab of the 'Layer Properties' window of the broken layer.





‘Repair Data Source’ may repair multiple layers if the matching feature class in the new geodatabase has the same name.  For instance, the wilderness areas layer will not be repaired because the original feature class used to created the layer was called ‘wilderness’ and the new feature class is called ‘wilderness areas’.



After a data source has been repaired you may receive drawing errors such as:





What do all those errors mean?!?  While we were creating the new GIS_IDFG.gdb for the regions, we thought it was also a good opportunity to update some of the data.  Consequently, some of the field names have changed.  So, after the data source is repaired old definition queries and label expression may cause the layer or its labels to not draw.  You have two options, you can edit the definition queries and label expressions using the proper field names OR you can remove the layer entirely and re-add the layer from the GIS_IDFG.gdb.



Here are a couple of examples of errors cause by legacy queries and expressions and how to fix them. 



The 'Hydrography (Idaho Only), Major Rivers' layer has a definition query of 



In the new 'Hydro_Stream_Idaho' feature class the length field is called Shape_Length and the LLID fields is a text field instead of a numeric field.  The definition query must now read Shape_Length > 50000 OR LLID = '1149345461224'.



The 'Geographic Names (w/o Hydro)' layer has a definition query of TYPE <> 'lake' AND TYPE <> 'reservoir' AND TYPE <> 'stream'.  In the new GNIS feature class, the type field is now called 'class'.





The label expression for the geographic names layer is [NAME].  In the new GNIS feature class, the name field is called 'Feature_Na'.