Starting a Reviewer session in an enterprise geodatabase

Similar to an edit session, the Reviewer session allows you to interact with your data; however, in a Reviewer session, you are performing quality control tasks. When you start a Reviewer session, you have the ability to review your data and write records to the Reviewer table, then interact with them. Once the Reviewer session is stopped, you can still run checks on the data and do visual quality control but cannot write information to the Reviewer table.

When you start a Reviewer session, you are prompted to choose a workspace, which is a geodatabase that can contain the data you want to review or be a separate database that only contains the Reviewer dataset information; this depends on your organization's workflow. By default, the user name is the Windows login name for the current user. You can also provide a custom name for the current Reviewer session.

The first time a database is used to store Reviewer information, a new dataset and tables are added to your database to accommodate the individual Reviewer sessions. All future sessions write to these same tables.

Caution:

Directly editing the contents of the Reviewer workspace can corrupt the relationships between the tables and affect the overall workspace. It is recommended that you work with the user interface to modify table contents.

When a Reviewer session is started for the first time in an enterprise database, you can specify a configuration keyword, which is a setting or group of settings that tells the geodatabase where or in what format to store data contents in each dataset.

The default setting for the keyword is Default, but others can also be chosen, depending on what the database administrator designates as a keyword in the DBTUNE table.

Learn more about configuration keywords

Steps:

1. Start ArcMap.
2. On the main menu, click Customize > Toolbars > Data Reviewer.
3. Click the Reviewer Session Manager button on the Data Reviewer toolbar.

   The Reviewer Session Manager dialog box appears.
4. Click Browse in the Reviewer Workspace area.

   The Reviewer Workspace dialog box appears.

5. Navigate to the geodatabase in which the Reviewer dataset is going to be stored.
6. Click Add.
7. Click New to start a new Reviewer session.

   The Reviewer Workspace Properties dialog box appears.
8. Choose an option for the spatial reference.
   • Use Default Spatial Reference (WGS-84)—Sets the Reviewer dataset's spatial reference to GCS_WGS_1984. This is the default spatial reference for ArcMap.
   • Use Active Data Frame Spatial Reference—The Reviewer dataset's spatial reference matches that of the active data frame.
   • Browse To Spatial Reference—Sets the Reviewer dataset's spatial reference to one you choose.
     Note:

     If you choose Browse To Spatial Reference, the New Spatial Reference wizard appears so you can choose the spatial reference you want to use with the Reviewer dataset.

   Note:

   The spatial reference selected for the Reviewer dataset should match the spatial reference of the data you are validating. This allows the error geometry to be stored in the feature classes within the Reviewer dataset.

9. If necessary, choose the Use configuration keyword option in the Select Configuration Keyword area to choose a different configuration keyword for the database.
10. Click the Use configuration keyword drop-down arrow and choose a configuration keyword.

    The keywords available in the list are dependent on what the database administrator has specified in the DBTUNE table as configuration keywords.

11. Click OK.

    The ID and Name text boxes are automatically populated in the Session area.

12. If necessary, type a custom name for the current Reviewer session in the Name text box.

    By default, the name matches the ID.

13. Click the Reviewer Dataset Version drop-down arrow and choose the geodatabase version to be used.

    The geodatabase version you choose from the list is the one in which the Reviewer table records are going to be stored.

14. Click Start Session.

    The button name changes to End Session.

15. Click Close.