How do I store a reference to a workspace in a feature?

Question

I have a feature class where each feature needs a reference to a raster in another workspace.

Is there some way I can get a string that uniquely identifies any workspace (ArcSDE, personal or file)?

Since I am writing from a geoprocessing tool IDEWorkspace2.ConnectionString looked promising. However I found that it returned an empty string when the workspace was a .gdb.

Another approach I thought may work was to call IWorkSpace.ConnectionProperties and then XML serialize. However this also seems to return an empty string when the workspace is a .gdb. Not sure if I did this correctly though.

Also if there is a way to get such an unique string, how do I get a IWorkspace object from this string?

Answer 1

I got the XML to work:

    public string connectionProperties2String(IPropertySet2 connectionProperties)
    {
       IXMLStream stream = new XMLStream();
       IXMLWriter writer = new XMLWriter();
       writer.WriteTo(stream as IStream);
       IXMLSerializer xsr = new XMLSerializer();
       xsr.WriteObject(writer, null, null, "", "", connectionProperties);
       return stream.SaveToString();
    }

    public IPropertySet2 string2ConnectionProperties(string scp)
    {
       IXMLStream stream = new XMLStream();
       stream.LoadFromString(scp);
       IXMLReader reader = new XMLReader();
       reader.ReadFrom(stream as IStream);
       IXMLSerializer xsr = new XMLSerializer();
       object obj = xsr.ReadObject(reader, null, null);
       return obj as IPropertySet2;
    }