More efficient way to get the start and the end points of a line (arcpy)?

Question

I am collecting start and end points for a large polyline feature class in a file geodatabase. I am using arcpy, ArcGIS 10.3, Python 2.7.3 64-bit and a 10.3 compressed file geodatabase with just one feature class (and no other objects).

One accesses the geometry properties with the SHAPE@ token which gives access to the geometry of the line (namely firstPoint and lastPoint).

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ["OID@", "SHAPE@"],query) as search_cur:
        allLinesList = [[row[0],(row[1].firstPoint.X,row[1].firstPoint.Y),
                         (row[1].lastPoint.X,row[1].lastPoint.Y)]
                            for row in search_cur]

Reading 1 million line features (note that my lines consist of only two vertices, start and end) takes ca 5 minutes. I have tried using for loop iterating a cursor instead of comprehension and iterating features in chunks of several hundred thousands with no significant difference in time.

Do you know any other faster way to read XY of the start and end points of the lines?

Answer 1

Write a proxy class in managed C++ if this is an option for your. Realistically, you might need to perform the kind of operation that takes longer in .NET or Arcpy (large iterations of small operations).You have the choice to write a proxy class in managed C++ where you can place ArcObjects code that heavily uses the interop layer.

Once you expose this code as public methods, you can call the methods from your C# or VB .NET and even from arcpy using comtypes. Since the interop layer is only required when you call the methods of this proxy class, the execution time can be greatly reduced. For example a method for creating a line feature with 1 million records takes 30 seconds with .NET, but using managed C++, it takes 5 seconds (6 times faster).

A Proxy class is the ultimate choice where you can get the most out of ArcObjects. This is what Arcpy data access module does to improve performance.