I have a client who requested a ArcGIS mosaic dataset, but as I found out today they only have licenses for ArcGIS 10.0, and I only have licenses for 10.1 and 10.2. The mosaic datasets I create cannot be viewed on their systems.
Is there any way to create a backwards compatible mosaic dataset with what I have? If not, are there any tools available elsewhere that would accomplish this (aside from getting a license for 10.0)?
Unfortunately mosaic dataset are not backward compatible. Please see this blog post from Esri. You will need to either uninstall ArcGIS 10.2 and reinstall ArcGIS 10.0, or setup a VM with ArcGIS 10.0.
Mosaic datasets are not but Raster Catalogs should be backward compatable so long as you ensure that you create the database with the correct version. Use the Create File GDB tool which will allow you to select the version (in this case 10 but it can also do back to 9.2).
Raster Catalog datasets do not have all the functions of mosaic datasets but are still tiled raster. You can select managed (rasters stored in the database) or unmanaged (rasters stored elsewhere and only the tiles and pyramids are in the database).
Unmanaged Raster Catalogs can be easily broken when moving but can also be repaired fairly simply.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention VRT data at this point. Virtual datasets are recognized by ArcGis from 10 and can be created using GDALbuildVRT; pyramids can be created for the whole dataset to speed it up in ArcCatalog. It is a simple XML format that remembers the extents and paths to raster datasets, relative paths are acceptable which makes it ideal for moving/delivery, broken paths can be fixed using find&replace in your favorite text editor.
