One of my main tasks right now is to document many of the details of maintaining ArcSDE geodatabases so I anticipate having several blog posts on this topic that are re-writes of documents I am working on. I am presuming that the person will have no ArcSDE experience so I am documenting very detailed information.

Almost all of the ArcSDE commands require that you specify which instance (service/port) the command applies to by using the ‘-i’ parameter.

Since we have multiple ArcSDE geodatabases, I like to have a handy-dandy sticky note with all the geodatabases and their respective ports on the side of my monitor.

But when that is not handy and I can never remember the ArcSDE command line syntax to get a list of instances and their ports–I mean remembering ‘sdeservice -o list’ is difficult at my age.

The quickest and most reliable way I’ve found to get the instance number is just to check the properties of your SDE connection file in ArcCatalog, right-click on it and select ‘Connection Properties’.

And the port is right there in the service entry (5164).