GeoData Sentry is an automated Quality Control and Quality Assurance application specifically for Esri’s© ArcGIS™ geodatabase, built to assist technical and managerial users in detecting and reporting errors related to attribute validity, referential integrity, and spatial relationships in the geodatabase. With a comprehensive view of your geodatabase data quality, your enterprise can confidently meet quality requirements and provide outstanding products and services that rely on a healthy geodatabase.
Keeping things tidy
GeoData Sentry can help protect your costly data investment by creating a unified environment for testing incoming data from conversion vendors, migrated data or ongoing testing on production data.
GeoData Sentry can mitigate data-related risk factors by testing at regular predetermined intervals to uncover systematic data errors early in the production process. This will elevate your overall confidence in your data, which means you can confidently move forward with complex network analysis, outage management, pipeline integrity evaluation, Smart Grid implementations, and hydraulic modeling.
We believe in our products, which is why we’re willing to put them to the test using your own data. See the difference with your own eyes!
Test Configuration
GeoData Sentry Test Configuration is a group of Test Suites. A Test Suite contains multiple tests, and each test contains the details of the test parameters.
GeoData Sentry connects to your geodatabase, allowing for tests to be generated based on geodatabase properties such as domains, relationships, logical connectivity rules, and subtype dependent domains, or an individual test can be configured based on a user-specific quality assurance plan.
Configured Test Suites can be run against production geodatabases and incoming data deliveries.
Review Reports
Reports can be created after executing selected tests within a test suite, or all the tests in every test suite. A report includes data metrics that allow both managers and technical reviewers to easily interpret the results of each test. In addition, each test run generates a CSV and Excel formatted files that provide summary statistics and individual error level details that easily drive acceptance reporting and analysis.
HTML Reports
CSV Reporting
Summary.csv reports summary level information that can be filtered, sorted, and categorized to support error prioritization and trend analysis.
AllFeatures.csv details all errors for the test run, including ObjectIDs, GlobalIDs, basic test details and a timestamp for each detected error.
Excel Reporting
RunReport.xlsx report is a multi-tabbed excel spreadsheet that includes Summary information, and detailed reporting for each test suite. The test name hyperlink opens the linked tab in the spreadsheet.
Ongoing Automated Testing
GeoData Sentry features a command line executable that can be configured to run one or more Test Suites. It can be run as a Windows scheduled task or a UC4 job scheduler script. Running groups of tests on a regular schedule allows users to baseline database quality and thereby proactively monitor database quality. Ongoing database monitoring makes it very easy for users to prioritize error corrections, modify user training and education, and identify gaps in transactional validation.
Trend Analysis
Tracking error results over time allows for determining the overall trend of data errors. Reporting the error rate trend can be very useful for tracking the progress of correction activities as well as identifying error introduction from a process, production editing or data import.
MAKING THE CASE
Ongoing Quality Assurance
Remote Geodatabase Monitoring
Lately we have been working with several of our large utility customers on remote quality assurance testing for their enterprise geodatabases with GeoData Sentry. We have been managing the test development, test updates, and batch testing capabilities. By remotely testing data for each customer, it allows them to concentrate on their daily activities, while still monitoring data quality of the geodatabase. Key components of the process that we developed are several options for report analysis, error summation and error prioritization.
GeoData Sentry Test Inventory
Attribute Tests
Coded Domain Test Detects values in a single column that are not part of the domain of legal values. GeoData Sentry detects non-legal values by comparing values in the column with a pre-established geodatabase coded domain, existing geodatabase tables, or a custom list that you define for the test.
Range Domain Test Detects values that lie outside of a specified range. This test is best used on columns that are composed of continuous values, such as elevation data or pressure values.
Non-Standard Test Detects attribute values within a column that are not standard letters, such as ?*&%$.
NULL Values Test Detects attribute values within a column that are null, blank or zero.
Unique Values Test Detects attribute values within a column that are duplicated.
Single Values Test Detects attribute values within a column that are not set to the default value.
Column Length Test Detects attribute values within a column that are shorter or longer than a specified length.
Subtype Values Test Detects feature classes and related tables with subtype control to ensure that all subtype values are valid. The test suite is automatically generated from the subtype rules in the geodatabase.
Custom Query Test Returns a record set based on a custom SQL query. Multiple columns can be tested looking for row inconsistency errors, where one attribute’s values are contingent on another’s values with a row of the database.
Table Relationship Test Detects mismatches between two tables based on the primary key/ foreign key relationship. All rows for one table are related to all rows in a second table based on a common key item.
Subtype Dependent Domain Test Detects subtype level coded and range domain testing. Ensuring that where a column is domain controlled, that the values within the column are valid. The test suite is automatically generated from the subtype and domain rules in the geodatabase. This test is essentially a domain test with a subtype filter.
Annotation Validation Detects the integrity of feature linked annotation. A test is created for each annotation expression. The annotation expression is evaluated based and compared to the actual annotation text strings reporting differences.
ArcFM Required Fields Detects NULL value in fields designated as required by ArcFM property configuration. Source data that utilizes ArcFM will have required fields identified as Not NULL = TRUE. These columns must be populated or there will be an ArcFM QA/QC error thrown.
Spatial Relationship Tests
Intersect Test Detects features from one feature class that do not intersect with features from a second feature class.
Undershoot / Overshoot Test Detects features from one feature class that do not connect with feature of the same feature class or an optional second feature class.
Overlap Detects where there is overlap between edges within a feature class and between feature classes.
Duplicate Geometry Test Detects duplicated geometries for points, lines and polygons.
Duplicate Vertex Test Detects duplicated vertices for edges.
Invalid Geometry Test Detects features with invalid geometry with lines, points, polygons and annotation. There are 13 different types of geometry problems that this test identifies, with the most common being NULL Geometry.
Minimum Length Test Detects edges that are shorter than a user defined feature length.
Cutback Edge Test Detects where an edge cuts back are an acute angle. Cutback can create jagged geometries in the data, but are not necessarily errors, however generally they are not desirable and usually are incorrect.
Disconnected Edge Test Detects edge that do not connect to any other edge in the geometric network.
Logical Connectivity Tests
Edge to Edge Test Detects where two edges are connected that should not be, based on the connectivity rules from the geometric network.
Junction to Edge Test Detects where a junction is connected to an edge where it should not be, based on the connectivity rules from the geometric network.
Edge to Edge with Junction Filter Test Detects where a junction is connected to an edge where it should not be, based on the connectivity rules from the geometric network.
Utility Network Connectivity Detects errors in a Utility Network where the data does not conform to the Utility Network rules.
Licensing, Support and Maintenance
Required Annual Maintenance fee includes software upgrades, bug fixes, and technical support. The first year of maintenance is complimentary.
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Let us show you what GeoData Sentry can do for your geodatabase.
You provide the data, we’ll provide the results.