Using Make Table View tool in ArcGIS Pro?

Question

I was going through the documentation of MakeTableView Tools here # http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/tool-reference/data-management/make-table-view.htm

I came across the output of the tool as a out_view. The tool seems to be very helpful for my need. But when I ran that standalone from the toolbox, it successfully ran but nothing was created. I was expecting something will create. Later I realized from document that the table view that is supposed to be created by the tool is temporary and would not persist after the session ends unless the document is saved.

I am not sure what is meant by that temporary or regarding the session. If I ran the tool standalone, the session would be of its own and if I write a code then the session may be of the code to expire. Can you please help me out of this confusion Or may be you may advice me how to run the tool standalone.

Answer 1

A Table View object is exactly what it sounds, it's a view of your table. So you have your "physical" data which could be a CSV file, Excel Worksheet or File Geodatabase, but how does ArcGIS Pro display those datasets, which are all very different styles, in a consistent table format in ArcGIS Pro? It creates a view. These are "virtual" tables and are objects that stop persisting when the script finishes or ArcGIS Pro is closed. You can also think of them as pointers to the source data, so deleting rows in a table view will delete the rows in the source table.

A table view is not just a simple view of the data, how do you think ArcGIS Pro maintains selections on rows that you have made? There is no mechanism to record that you had selected a row in a CSV file, it is the job of the table view. Table views allow you to hide fields, apply definition queries and allow data tables to be joined. Your table in a database cannot do any of these, they are simply data stores, it is again the job of the table view.

So if you want to select and export some rows from a table this is why you need to create a table view, the selection tool can only work with table views as they are the only thing capable of handling the selection and then finally export.