What is ArcSDE?
ArcSDE is Esri's technology for accessing and managing geospatial data within relational databases. ArcSDE technology supports the reading and writing of multiple standards, including (among other data storage options) Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) standards for simple features; the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard for spatial types; the Oracle Spatial format; the PostGIS spatial format; and the Microsoft spatial formats.
ArcSDE geodatabases allow you to use other Esri products, such as ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server, as well as custom applications to store, use, and manage all your GIS data in one of the following database management systems (DBMS): IBM DB2, IBM Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, or PostgreSQL. You can store your data in a central database and support the concurrent multiuser editing necessary for most GIS data management workflows.
ArcSDE is unique in its support of the following capabilities:
- It is open and interoperable across multiple database management systems.
- It is standards based, using as its native data structure the OGC binary simple features standard and the ISO spatial type.
- It supports full, open Structured Query Language (SQL) access to geodatabases.
- It provides high performance and scales to a large number of users.