Creating a database table in ArcGIS for Desktop

You can create tables in your database when you connect to it from ArcGIS for Desktop provided you have the required database permissions to create a table.

Follow these steps to create a nonspatial table in a database from ArcGIS for Desktop:

Steps:

1. Start ArcCatalog or ArcMap and open the Catalog window.
2. Create a connection to your database.
3. Right-click the database connection in the Catalog tree, point to New, then click Table.
4. Type a name for the table.

   Table names must start with a letter and cannot exceed 160 characters.

5. If you want, type an alias for the table.

   You might have a table name standard that isn't user-friendly. In those cases, create an alias for the table.

6. Define the fields for your table.

   All tables must contain a unique identifier to be used with ArcGIS. Therefore, ArcGIS automatically adds an ObjectID field to the table. The ObjectID value will be populated automatically if you load data into the table.

   1. Click the next blank row in the Field Name column and type a name.
   2. Click in the Data Type column next to the new field's name and choose a data type from the drop-down list.
   3. Optionally, you can create an alias for this field by clicking in the Alias field under Field Properties and typing an alias.
   4. If you don't want any null values stored in the field, click the field next to Allow NULL values and choose No from the drop-down list.
   5. Define additional field properties.

      For BLOB or text fields, type the maximum length of the field in the Length field. For a date field, you can define a default date in the Default Value field. For raster fields, you can type a description of the raster content. For numeric types, there may be precision or scale values you can set. See the "Numbers" section of Geodatabase field data types.

   6. Repeat steps a through e for each field you want to add to the table.
7. Click Finish to create the table.