Geodatabase Maintenance QA Tools

Project Title
Zoning Geodatabase Maintenance QA Tools

Time Span
2006 - 2007

Summary
One of the challenges faced by the planning department after the migration of its spatial database from tiled ESRI “coverages” to a seamless geodatabase was that data editors were able to make much more far-reaching mistakes in editing, and were less aware of these mistakes. Further, with the introduction of versioning to the geodatabase the process of quality assurance became more complex. To alleviate this downside to versioned geodatabase maintenance, NSG was engaged to develop custom QA tools. These tools, developed for ArcGIS, work within ArcMap and operate against versioned ArcSDE feature classes. They highlight all edits made by an editor, intended or not, and allow a QA person to more completely, easily, and quickly check editors’ edits. The tools operate in such a way that the user can have the tool progress the QA person through all edits, or allow the person to determine which part of the geodatabase to inspect. Edits that have been verified are checked off in a database, while edits that require further action are sent back to editors.

Technologies

• ArcSDE
• ArcGIS
• ArcObjects
• Visual Basic 6
• Oracle

Innovations

• Very thorough QA tools for seamless geodatabases
• Suitable for integration with a data maintenance workflow management system
• Allows users to see the before-and-after of each edit, and to more easily determine the appropriateness and accuracy of the edit