10014: Layer's draw time may be affected by slow join access times

You are using a join field in a map layer that may affect the drawing performance of your map.

Solutions

First, check the drawing performance of your basemap layer in ArcMap or your map service in the Preview window. See Working with basemap layers or Publishing map services for more information. If you need to make changes, here are some suggestions:

• Add the attribute column directly into your feature class and modify your map layer properties to use this new field.
• Alternatively, you should tune your map layer and database implementation to ensure you can gain the best drawing performance. Many of the tips below provide guidance on best practices for how to improve drawing performance when using join fields.

More information

Most database design guidelines promote organizing your database into multiple tables—each focused on a specific set of columns—instead of one large table containing all the necessary fields. Having multiple tables prevents duplicating information in the database because you store the information only once in one table. When you need information that isn't in the current table, you can link the two tables together. For a more detailed overview, see About joining and relating tables.

Joining tables to a feature class is typically done to append the fields of the table to those of the feature class table through an attribute or field common to both tables. This provides efficient storage but can have performance implications.

Tips

Here are some tips that can help you gain incremental performance improvements in dynamic map display.

• ESRI strongly recommends using file geodatabases and ArcSDE geodatabases over personal geodatabases both for performance reasons and for scaling your databases to sizes larger than 4 GB. See Types of geodatabases for more information.
• For best performance with geodatabases, use ArcSDE geodatabases. In use cases with many simultaneous users, ArcSDE geodatabases are faster. Since ArcSDE geodatabases are DBMS based, they will scale better than file geodatabases in situations where you have a large number of users (hundreds of users or more).
• For the best performance, keep your feature class table and the join attribute table in one common geodatabase. If you cannot do this, performance will degrade. The following table summarizes potential performance implications:

  Base feature class	Join table	Use base table columns using inner join (select matching rows)	Use join table columns using inner join (select matching rows)	Use join table columns using outer join (select all records)
  Personal geodatabase	Any DBMS including personal geodatabase	Very slow	Very slow	Very slow
  File geodatabase	File geodatabase	Fast	Fast	Fast
  File geodatabase	ArcSDE geodatabase	Slow	Slow	Slow
  ArcSDE geodatabase	File geodatabase	Fast	Fast	Fast
  ArcSDE geodatabase	ArcSDE geodatabase	Fast	Fast	Slow
  ArcSDE geodatabase	Across to another DBMS	Slow	Slow	Slow

  Join table performance implications
• Create attribute indexes on your join fields in both the feature class table and the join table.