Configuration keywords represent a setting or group of settings that is used by the geodatabase to identify where or in what format to store the data in each dataset. You can use configuration keywords when you create a table or feature class to specify how data is stored.
Configuration keywords are used with file geodatabases and enterprise geodatabases. Each of these geodatabase types has its own set of keywords. In the case of enterprise geodatabases, there are a number of configuration keywords that can be used for specifying geometry storage (which varies by database management system) as well as for managing geometric networks, topologies, and terrains.
The following are examples of configuration keywords and their uses:
- DEFAULTS—This uses reasonable default configuration and storage settings for most geodatabase uses.
- MAX_FILE_SIZE_256TB—If you are importing an extremely large image into a file geodatabase, you can specify the MAX_FILE_SIZE_256TB configuration keyword to allow the raster dataset to be up to 256 terabytes in size.
- TEXT_UTF16—If you are creating a file geodatabase feature class that will contain attribute data in Chinese, Russian, or another language with non-Latin characters, you can specify this keyword so the text characters are stored in UTF-16, a more efficient storage format for these languages.
In most cases, the default option creates new datasets that will work well. However, there are some cases in which you must specify a configuration keyword, for example, to use a nondefault geometry storage setting in an enterprise geodatabase or to store a large raster dataset (one that is a terabyte or more in size) in a file geodatabase.