Is there a SDE command to export/import feature class schema only without data?

Question

I'm using ArcGIS Server 10.0, ArcSDE 10.0 and Oracle 11g.

I'd like to create a sde export of my layers' schema. The export would be used to create easily those layer in a new database instance.

Do you know of an export/import SDE command that allows that?

Or at least, is it possible to import an XML schema file using a SDE command or Python script?

Answer 1

At 10.1 they added geoprocessing tools to import/export XML workspace documents. At 10.0 you'd need to write something (see these: 1, 2) using ArcObjects, use Delete Rows beforehand, or use a more complex combination of geoprocessing tools and logic in Python (e.g. what X-Ray for ArcCatalog does).

Answer 2

The 'sdeexport' command accepts a WHERE clause flag (-w). Just set it to 1=0, and the resulting export file will be empty.

Note that an 'sdeimport' of the resulting file will not have any ArcGIS metadata, or ArcGIS anything (feature datasets, domains,...), so you really don't want to do this unless you have a bunch of simple feature classes created with command-line tools and barely registered with the geodatabase.