Patches and Service Packs

I have recently been working on a project for a client where we have written some custom ArcPad check in tools, which firstly deposits all edits into a Staging File GeoDatabase. After a manaual verification has taken place, we then upload all edits to a Versioned SDE Master GeoDatabase. The tool is written using ArcGIS Geoprocessing tools and Python scripting.

In doing my testing, I found an issue with appending the edits to the Versioned SDE GeoDatabase. It worked fine to an unversioned database, but not the versioned one. An error was appearing telling me I could not edit the data outside of an edit session (which is not possible from the Geoporcessing script).

After doing a bit of research, I found that this was a bug with ArcGIS 9.3.1, and (thankfully) there was a patch available from the ESRI Support Center website.

This serves as a good reminder to keep your software up to date, and if you are having problems, check for patches and service packs. Also check the user forums - chances are someone else has experienced exactly the same problem you are facing.