Data models and versions
Data models are Extensible Markup Language (XML) workspace documents that contain different structures that can be applied to your database for the type of data you want to create or with which you are working. Adding data models to the product library is optional and is primarily used by ESRI solutions such as the Nautical Solution and Aeronautical Solution.
With a new product library, or as your organization supports more data models, you might need to add names of new data models and versions that are supported. You can also create new versions for data models that are already in your product library or that you have added. This allows you to work with different versions of the same model.
The names and version numbers of the data models can be added to the product library through the Product Library Properties dialog box or the Data Management pane on the Production Properties dialog box. For each new model, you can specify the name, as well as the major, minor, edition, and revision numbers.
You can indicate which tables are going to be versioned and archived for each new model and version. Versioning maintains versions of the tables in an ArcSDE database. Archiving allows you to indicate whether the table history is used for replication.
When feature datasets are included in the schema file, the feature classes within the dataset are included as part of the data model version.