Making a layer read-only in arcgis 9.3.1

Question

Is there a way to make a layer (a independent shapefile or a layer in a SDE gdb) read-only - so that people will be able to see it but not edit it?

(I'm using 9.3.1)

Do you mean making the underlying featureclass readonly? Or do you mean you also want to prevent people from changing the layername, renderer, visible fields, etc. ?
I have several hundreds of feature classes in one SDE GDB. I want to make sure that one of those (the state polygon feature class) can never be erased, because erasing it disrupts the network rules of other feature classes.

Mapperz · Answer 1 · 2010-11-22 02:32:24Z

for a quick and simple 'lock - read only' (on Windows) you can make the files read-only (or folder of files)

SDE you can set the permissions of the user to read-only.

or use ArcReader/Explorer to view the files.

geodatabases: if editing locks all other users out (read-only)

shapefiles:

failing all the above > make a PDF.

1 Answer