You can create a new version, derived from an existing version, with ArcCatalog or ArcMap. When you create a version, you specify its name, an optional description, and the version's permission. As the owner of the version, you can change these properties or delete a version at any time.

(For a definition of a version, see Understanding versioning.)

You set the permission of a version to protect it from being edited or viewed by users other than the version owner. You can set one of three permissions on a version:

• Private—Only the owner may view the version and modify available datasets.
• Public—Any user may view the version. Any user who has been granted read/write (UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE or read/write) permissions on datasets can modify those datasets.
• Protected—Any user may view the version, but only the owner may edit datasets to which he or she has read/write permission.

When setting the permissions of versions, consider your version workflow strategy along with the needs of the various users working within that framework. You should use version permissions along with dataset permissions to control access to the data.

When setting permissions, pay particular attention to how you'll safeguard the DEFAULT version. The DEFAULT version is the ancestor of every other version in a geodatabase and usually represents the published version of a geodatabase. Any feature or rows that are deleted from the DEFAULT version, even though they are recorded in the version delta files, cannot be restored unless the dataset is unregistered as versioned (assuming the database had not been compressed beforehand). Unregistering a dataset as versioned will restore the dataset to its configuration at the last database compress; however, all uncompressed edits will be lost. Given that, it is essential to safeguard DEFAULT to prevent accidental alterations or corruption.

There are three ways you can protect the DEFAULT version:

• If you've chosen a strategy where users directly edit the DEFAULT version, you can create a new version as a read-only, archive version of DEFAULT. Any features accidentally deleted from the DEFAULT version could be restored from this version as required.
• If you've chosen a strategy where some, but not all, users need to edit the DEFAULT version directly, you can create new versions from DEFAULT for some of the users to edit.
• If you've chosen a strategy where no one directly edits the DEFAULT, the ArcSDE administrative user should set the permission of the DEFAULT version to PROTECTED and not PRIVATE; PRIVATE would prevent all users except the ArcSDE administrative user from connecting to the database. With the permissions set to PROTECTED, any user can view the DEFAULT version, but only the ArcSDE administrative user can either edit directly or reconcile and post edits to it from other versions.

To read an example scenario of creating versions and setting permissions on the versions, see Version creation and permissions example.

NOTE: To create a version or set its permissions, an ArcEditor or ArcInfo license is required.

1. In the ArcCatalog tree, right-click a connection to the geodatabase and click Versions to open the Version Manager dialog box. Or, in ArcMap, click the Version Manager button on the Versioning toolbar.
2. To create a new version, right-click the version from which you want to derive the new version and click New. This will open the New Version dialog box. Type a name for the new version and a description of the version (optional) and click the desired permission level for the version: Private, Public, or Protected.
3. Click OK to create the new version.

Tips The length of the version name is limited to 62 characters. You can use the version description to provide additional information regarding the version's purpose. The size limit on the description is 62 characters. You can only change permissions on versions that you own. To alter the permission of an existing version that you own, right-click the version in the Version Manager dialog box and click Properties. Click the desired permission in the Permission section of the Version Properties dialog box and click OK. In the Version Manager dialog box, you can sort versions by clicking a column heading.