How to join a File Geodatabase table with only one record of Feature Class

Question

I've a Geodatabase containing a Featureclass and some File Geodatabase Tables. Each File Geodatabase Table is actully about the only one record of a featurClass. Can We Join these File Geodatabase Tables with that of the records of FeatureClass respectively. In short, I want to join a complete table not with another table but with only one row of the other table. Is it possible? If yes, how?

Answer 1

Although your description isn't entirely clear, it sounds like you are trying to do 1:N relation, instead of 1:1 or 1:0 join. You can use a "Relationship Class" for that in ArcGIS. Look it up in the ArcGIS Help and see if that is what you need. With a Relationship Class you will be able to view multiple related records for one record in your base Feature Class.

If instead, your wish is to automatically "duplicate" the one record of the base Feature Class for each record in the related table and add all fields of the two tables together, I don't think it can be done directly from within ArcGIS. You may need to script it, or resort to defining views or queries in an enterprise database like SQL Server or Oracle for more flexibility in joining and setting up relationships.

Answer 2

It sounds like you need to try the Keep Only Matching Records option:

With the keep only matching records option, if a record in the target table doesn't have a match in the join table, that record is removed from the resultant target table. If the target table is the attribute table of a layer, features that don't have data joined to them are not shown on the map.

This is described in its Online Help.