Hi, I have two GDB schemas, one is the original design (empty) and the other came back from our contractor with data added in it. They sometime play with the schema to fit the data in it, for example originally Non-Nullable columns have been changed to Nullable or changed the width of the column, etc. I need to compare only the schemas of both the GDBs (original and contractor's) in such a way that FME should report the differences in Field Properties (Allow Null Values, Length etc.) and other normal comparison of number of column, their types etc. Matcher and ChangeDecector does not go that deep into the schema. Please let me know the easiest solution as I am not FME expert. Additinally, just to give another direction to thinking, I would like to say if XMLs of the GDBs of any use for this purpose. Regards AsifM
+1hi @asifmehmood, I'd suggest that rather than compare the GDB files in FME you compare the schema XML files for both - get this by exporting the schema as XML from ArcGIS (you coudl use python from within FME to call ArcGIS to do this export for you). This will give you the detail of the structure like which fields are nullable for each file (the SchemaReader in FME doesn't give you this level of detail) - and then in FME you can read both XML files and compare.
hi @asifmehmood, I'd suggest that rather than compare the GDB files in FME you compare the schema XML files for both - get this by exporting the schema as XML from ArcGIS (you coudl use python from within FME to call ArcGIS to do this export for you). This will give you the detail of the structure like which fields are nullable for each file (the SchemaReader in FME doesn't give you this level of detail) - and then in FME you can read both XML files and compare.
Thank you for the quick response. I have two questions out of your answer. Firstly, my ArcGIS has just the basic license, therefore I cannot export XML using ArcGIS. Can I try that conversion through FME (if I am not wrong, input feature class to Schema (any format) READER and WRITER is simple
XML (Extensible Markup Language). Secondly, as you said that I can compare XMLs in FME, could you please tell me using what transformer?
+28- Contributor
As far as I am aware, there is no licensing restrictions for exporting the XML. see http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/manage-data/geodatabases/exporting-a-geodatabase-schema-to-an-xml-workspace-document.htm for details.
Then you can use an XML Reader and ChangeDetector to see how the schemas vary.
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