Database Software

We are a multi-vedor GIS shop using Oracle spatial 8.1.7.

We have no problem with Geomedia and Mapinfo to access Oracle spatial layers. We would like our Arc product (ArcGIS, AV and ARCIMS..)users to access the data in read-only mode without ArcSDE server license (too expensive and not worth to have it now). After the a little "struggling" the direct-connect(read only)from ArcCatalog to oracle spatial is working but we still have problems with the registration of Oracle spatial layers in ArcSDE:

1. The "auto-register" does not work at all.

I got "you do not have access to any layers in this database" error when using sdelayer -o describe...

I noticed that Dave Miller mentioned the sde.layers table and mdsys.sdo_geom_metadata_table need to be synchronized. Can Dave or anyone else kindly give a bit details (mauually do it in SQL*Plus?? My SDE.LAYERS table is empty now).

I would like to get the auto-register to work as we have hundreds of layers in Oracle spatial.

2. I tried "manual-register" with sdelayer -o register for test purpose, it gave all kinds of errors until I got the syntax to the acceptance. The final error is:

C:\>sdelayer -o register -l bnd_am,geoloc -k SDO_GEOMETRY -e sl -c mi_prinx -C SDE
-u miadm -p miadm@gisp -i sde:oracle


ArcSDE 8.2 Build 1114 Wed Sep 11 10:26:02 PDT 2002
Layer Administration Utility
-----------------------------------------------------
Error: No ArcSDE server license found. This is a read-only connection. (-327).
Error: Unable to create registration for table bnd_am
Error: No ArcSDE server license found. This is a read-only connection. (-327).
Error: Cannot Create Layer.

As we are using ArcSDE8.2 client, we do not need a license. My question is:
will "sdelayer -o register" populate the SDE.LAYERS table in Oracle? if yes, how
can read-only connection do it?

Appreciate any help.

Fenghui Wang