If you're choosing an indexing strategy for an ArcSDE geodatabase, refer to your DBMS documentation for more detailed guidance. This topic provides only a brief introduction to these concepts. They can be created for single or multiple fields they can be unique and for some geodatabases, they can be created in ascending or descending order. Once an index has been added, it can be deleted and added again at any time.Īttribute indexes can be created in different ways.
Attribute indexes can be created by accessing the Properties dialog box in ArcCatalog or with geoprocessing. If you need to frequently edit a field, avoid creating an index for it if you can.
Each time you edit the feature class, ArcGIS must also update the indexes. Create only those indexes you really need, since each index you add slightly slows edits to the feature class. Once you have data in a feature class or table, create attribute indexes for the fields you frequently query against. For most types of attribute queries, it is faster to look up a record with an index than to start at the first record and search through the entire table. An attribute index is an alternate path used by ArcGIS to retrieve a record from a table. Adding or modifying attribute indexes in ArcSDE geodatabases is not available in ArcGIS for Desktop Basic.Īttribute indexes can speed up attribute queries on feature classes and tables.