Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Subtype Field Names: Make them different to the feature class name

I recently had a call from a client using ArcPad 7.1, saying that their drop down lists (subtypes and coded value domains) were not appearing in ArcPad. I got a copy of their database, and performed my own check out to see what was happening.
First of all, I checked the feature class in ArcCatalog and ArcMap. All of the lists appeared as expected there.
Next I checked the .axf.xml check out log, which gets created in the same directory as the AXF file. Usually this reveals a lot about why check out was not successful, for things such as data and schema errors. Again, this was empty.
I then opened up the AXF file in ArcPad Studio, and it turned out that the Data Tables branch of the AXF structure was empty. This is where all of these tables are stored within the AXF.
After digging around for a while, I realised that the feature class was called Heritage, which was the same as the Subtype field. Turns out that this was the cause of the problem; if I renamed that field, it all worked as expected.
There are two reason for writing this blog:
  1. To make you aware of the bug - I have logged this with ESRI so hopefully it will get fixed soon.
  2. To outline the troubleshooting process that I went through.
Hopefully someone will find this of use. If nothing else, it should serve as a reminder for me!

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