There are many options to the GIS user when deciding what data store to use to store geographic data. At ArcGIS 9.2 we introduced a new type of geodatabase, the File Geodatabase. While all types of geodatabases have their strengths and weaknesses, we thought it would be useful to highlight some of the strengths of using this new type of geodatabase.
The database size is only limited by the available disk space. By default, individual tables and feature classes can be up to 1 TB. With the use of configuration keywords this can be expanded to 256 TB.
Works on many different operating systems including Windows and UNIX (Solaris and Linux)
Provides excellent performance and scalability. For example, to support individual datasets containing well over 300 million features and datasets that can scale beyond 500 GB per file with very fast performance. The file geodatabase out performs shapefiles for operations involving attributes, and scales the data size limits way beyond shapefile limits. Through the use of an efficient data structure that is optimized for performance and storage, File Geodatabases use about one third of the feature geometry storage required by shapefiles and Personal Geodatabases.
The File Geodatabase uses an edit model similar to shapefiles, supporting one editor and multiple readers. Each standalone feature class, table and feature dataset can be edited by different editors simultaneously but can only have one editor performing edits on them at any given time. This means that User A can edit the Roads Feature Class at the same time as User B edits the Parcels Feature Class.
File Geodatabases also allow users to compress feature classes and tables to a read-only format to reduce storage requirements even further. This reduces the Geodatabase’s overall foot-print on disk without reducing the performance.