Chapter 9Publishing ArcGIS-managed data

Objectives

• Understand data storage options.
• Identify hosted layer types.
• Understand the benefits of the ArcGIS-managed approach.
• Create a hosted feature layer in the ArcGIS Enterprise portal.

Introduction

In the previous chapter, you learned about the different types of content you can create in ArcGIS Enterprise, such as web layers, web maps, apps, data stores, and tools. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to publish and store the data that is powering these items. Based on your organization’s need to access, manage, and edit data, you will learn about the types of layers you can publish and how to store your data in ArcGIS Enterprise. You will learn the difference between a hosted feature layer, where the underlying data is managed by ArcGIS, and a referenced web layer, where the underlying data is user managed.

Data in ArcGIS Enterprise

Organizations store data in ArcGIS Enterprise with the purpose of having a centralized repository. Data can be accessed by other departments spread across a wider geographic space using mobile devices and web apps to connect to the data through web services. These web services are made available through a standard referred to as REST (representational state transfer). The server application acts as an intermediary between the underlying data source, which is usually a database or geodatabase, and the client application running on a browser or in a mobile device. Organizations often adopt this approach because it is faster and more efficient than having copies of local data distributed across multiple departments or network shares.

You can publish and store data in ArcGIS Enterprise in two primary ways:

• Publish hosted feature layers in which the underlying data and lifetime of the data is managed by the ArcGIS Enterprise software.
• Reference web layers in which the underlying data and its lifetime is managed by your organization administrator.

Most organizations use a mix of hosted layers and referenced layers for support. The best choice for a given web layer depends on your data strategy.

ArcGIS-managed data

ArcGIS-managed data represents a storage strategy in which ArcGIS Enterprise maintains direct control over the physical location, life cycle, and security of the datasets you choose to host. Such data becomes hosted by ArcGIS, meaning you and your organization’s members interact with these layers primarily through the ArcGIS Enterprise portal and associated apps such as Map Viewer, ArcGIS Dashboards, ArcGIS Field Maps, and ArcGIS Pro. For example, once the data is shared as a hosted feature layer, ArcGIS manages the underlying database and its optimal maintenance. It relies on the ArcGIS Data Store component to automate tasks, such as database creation, maintenance, indexing, caching, and security enforcement. The members of your organization focus on maintaining the resulting web layers, such as determining the layer access level, and performing spatial analysis.

ArcGIS-managed data provides a clean solution, whether your team needs to produce rapid prototypes of new datasets, share information with a large number of users, or simply reduce the overhead of database administration. Once you publish layers in this manner, you can rely on ArcGIS Enterprise to handle many operational details that might otherwise require significant technical knowledge.

Benefits of ArcGIS-managed data

When organizations choose to publish hosted layers rather than referencing an external store, they often do so in pursuit of several key advantages. These benefits can include the ability to scale seamlessly, reduce complex database management concerns, and align with common workflows in ArcGIS Enterprise.

Scalability

ArcGIS-managed data can scale to accommodate everything from small departmental projects to large enterprise deployments. When data is hosted in ArcGIS Enterprise, administrators do not need to worry about intricately managing the data storage, adjusting storage parameters, or implementing complex replication strategies. ArcGIS Enterprise is designed to handle hosted layers with a large number of features without introducing unwieldy dependencies or placing too heavy a load on a team’s data managers.

For example, a city government uses ArcGIS Enterprise to manage its public works data. By hosting the data in ArcGIS Enterprise, they can scale their system to support thousands of hosted layers, from small departmental projects to large citywide initiatives.

Data access

Once a dataset is published to ArcGIS Enterprise as a hosted feature layer, it becomes immediately accessible to those with appropriate permissions. This streamlines the user experience because everyone in the organization interacts with the data through familiar applications such as Map Viewer without needing direct database connections. Data creators can grant editing or viewing permissions, and the portal enforces those rules consistently.

For example, a local company publishes its asset data as hosted feature layers in ArcGIS Enterprise. This approach supports both web and field editing workflows, again without requiring direct database connections, ensuring that everyone in the organization has access to the most up-to-date information.

Hosted feature layer functionality

When an organization chooses to have ArcGIS Enterprise manage the data for a feature layer, it unlocks the inherent advantages of hosted feature services that ArcGIS Enterprise provides. Hosted feature layers can be edited and served out to multiple user groups or public audiences, support offline workflows for field collection, and seamlessly integrate with applications such as Field Maps or ArcGIS Survey123. This capability means that teams can collaborate on data in near real time, crowdsource updates, and enable fieldworkers to capture new information on mobile devices. Because the data resides within the ArcGIS Data Store, it benefits from automatic indexing and security controls without additional configuration or overhead.

For example, a disaster response agency uses ArcGIS Enterprise to host its emergency response data. During a crisis event, multiuser editing against these feature services allows responders to make concurrent edits. Because there isn’t a mechanism to detect conflicts, the last submitted edit will be honored and made available to the entire agency. This workflow ensures that the most recent data is always available, facilitating efficient and coordinated disaster response efforts.

Data management and life cycle

When referring to ArcGIS-managed data, a key detail is how the system handles its life cycle. If a hosted layer is deleted from ArcGIS Enterprise, the corresponding service and data in the ArcGIS Data Store are also deleted. This automated approach removes the need for manual cleanup of orphaned datasets or references. Rather than juggling multiple databases or file stores, administrators can trust that any content published as a hosted item will remain strictly under the software’s control for its entire lifespan. This streamlined data management model allows organizations to maintain a cleaner, more organized environment over time, without additional overhead for data removal or archiving routines.

For example, a university’s GIS department uses ArcGIS Enterprise to manage its research data. When a hosted layer is no longer needed for a project, deleting it from ArcGIS Enterprise automatically removes the corresponding data from the ArcGIS Data Store, simplifying data management and ensuring a clean, organized environment.

ArcGIS Data Store

Central to the ArcGIS-managed data experience is the ArcGIS Data Store application. This software component allows you to configure data stores for your organization’s hosted feature layers, hosted scene layers, and spatiotemporal feature layers in an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. Whether installed on Linux or Windows, ArcGIS Data Store includes a setup and configuration workflow that creates a behind-the-scenes environment for storing geospatial data. Because ArcGIS Data Store is tailored to the ArcGIS Enterprise portal experience, it allows administrators to easily add, remove, and monitor the health of data store instances without custom scripting or complex database administration.

ArcGIS Data Store supports multiple storage types that address various use cases:

• The relational data store is the data store that your ArcGIS Enterprise portal’s hosting server uses to store the data for hosted feature layers. The hosting server must be configured with a relational data store before the organization administrator can add the hosting server to the portal.
• The object data store stores data for hosted scene layers and hosted 3D tile layers, as well as the cached query response for hosted feature layers. Starting with ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4, the object data store took the role of the now deprecated tile cache data store and stores caches for hosted scene layers. Because of this, the object data store has become part of a base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. The ArcGIS Data Store object store requires large amounts of memory. Configure it on a machine or machines separate from other data stores.
• The spatiotemporal big data store supports hosted spatiotemporal feature layers and map image layers designed to store and archive high-volume, real-time observational data, including moving objects and sensor data, for efficient analysis and visualization. Primarily used with the ArcGIS GeoEvent^™ Server starting from version 10.4, it can store and query significantly more data records than traditional databases. This data store also populates the location tracking service, recording the location of mobile users. Because of its high demand for disk space and memory, it should be configured on separate machines from other data stores.
• The graph store is a database that the portal’s ArcGIS Knowledge Server uses to store the entities and relationships that compose a knowledge graph. The knowledge graph services that run on the Knowledge Server site access the data in the graph store, while the object store enables efficient management of large binary objects that might otherwise be difficult to handle in a relational database.

By tailoring the data store type to the nature of the content being managed, organizations can incorporate an array of data-driven workflows without leaving the ArcGIS environment.

Web layer types that can be hosted

ArcGIS Enterprise can host many web layer types, each supporting different visualization or editing needs. Feature layers form the backbone of most hosted workflows and are stored in the relational data store. By publishing data as a hosted feature layer, users can query and edit the attributes or geometry within a web map or custom application, and the ArcGIS Enterprise portal enforces permissions, versioning rules, and other settings that the administrator configures. This approach is especially useful for collaborative editing or crowdsourcing scenarios where input from many participants is required.

Hosted feature layer views extend the concept of hosted feature layers by allowing derived layers that point to the same underlying dataset while applying specific filters, symbology, or permission rules. An organization might share a view with certain team members that omits sensitive fields or excludes certain records, ensuring that each audience sees only what is relevant to them. Because these views all refer back to the same hosted dataset, updates appear in any related view, which eliminates the need for duplicate data or complex synchronization scripts.

Hosted scene layers provide a dedicated format for displaying 3D features in the enterprise portal’s scene viewer or other 3D-capable apps. Publishing a scene layer allows large multipatch or point data to be efficiently rendered on the client side, relying on server-side processing and caching to maintain performance. Administrators can thus bring detailed buildings, urban infrastructure, or terrain models into an immersive environment without imposing prohibitive loading times or GPU demands on end users.

By combining these hosted layer options with the capabilities of ArcGIS Data Store, ArcGIS Enterprise enables a highly streamlined workflow for publishing, sharing, and maintaining web layers. Organizations can rapidly create new hosted layers for a pilot project, retire or republish them as needs change, and confidently rely on ArcGIS to safeguard data integrity along the way. This holistic model allows administrators to focus on what matters: delivering the right maps, data, and analytical workflows to the right audiences, unencumbered by the intricacies of database management and infrastructure overhead.

Tutorial 9: Create a hosted feature layer

In this tutorial, you will create a hosted feature layer for field data collection. Rather than creating the layer from scratch, you will use an existing template. This saves time in creating the feature layer because this method duplicates the template properties and schema into the new feature layer. The members of your organization will then use the empty layer to create new features.

You will first log in to your ArcGIS Enterprise portal using a portal account that has, at a minimum, the creator user type assigned. You will then create the hosted feature layer using an existing template to generate the layer schema.

Create a feature layer from an existing template

1. Sign in to your organization’s ArcGIS Enterprise portal.
2. On the navigation bar, click the Content tab. Then click New item.
3. In the New item window, click Feature layer.
4. Select the Use a template option to create an empty feature layer with fields from an existing template. Click Next.
5. In the Create a feature layer window, in the search bar, type Crop Scouting. Select the layer in the results.

   You will use this template to create your new layer.

   

6. Click More details to review the layer details. Then continue clicking Next to accept all the default layer options.
7. In the New item window, add the following descriptive item details:
   • Title: Field observations
   • Tags: field observations, hosted, Esri, Getting to Know ArcGIS Enterprise
   • Summary: This hosted feature layer is used to record field observations.
8. Click Save.

   Once the layer is created, a new item is added and listed as Feature Layer (hosted) on the Content tab.

   

Make changes to a hosted feature layer

Although the layer has been generated from an existing template, modifications are often needed to ensure the layer properties match a specific industry or the parameters of the intended data collection process. Next, you will edit the layer capabilities and fields.

1. On the Content tab, click the Field observations feature layer to open the item page.
2. Click the Settings tab.

   This opens the general capabilities associated with this layer.

3. Scroll down to the Editing subsection.

   You will see the current capabilities enabled on the hosted feature layer as follows:

   • Enable editing is enabled to allow portal users to add, delete, and update features.
   • Enable sync is also enabled to allow portal users to make edits while disconnected from the network.

   You will keep these capabilities enabled as these are useful for field data collection. At the end of the data collection process, you will want to allow your customers to download the data in various formats. For that, you will need to enable the export option.

4. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Under Export Data, check the box for Allow others to export to different formats option.

   

5. Click Save.

   Next, you will add one more field necessary for the data collection.

6. Scroll to the top of the Settings tag and click the Data tab.
7. Click the Fields tab in the top-right corner.

   All the layers fields are displayed. These fields were added from the layer template used. Now you will add one more field.

   

8. Click the Add button.
9. In the Add Field window, enter the following settings:
   • Field Name: Class
   • Display Name: Class

   

10. When done, click Add New Field to save your changes.

    The Class field is now displayed in the fields list, and the layer is ready for field data collection.

Summary

You reviewed at a high level the two methods of sharing data to ArcGIS Enterprise. By copying all data, a hosted feature layer is created. In this case, you are choosing the ArcGIS-managed approach to data management. On the other hand, when data is not copied and is shared by reference from a registered data store, you are choosing a user-managed approach to data management because the data is stored and maintained outside of ArcGIS Enterprise. This chapter detailed the first approach, ArcGIS-managed data. We reviewed the benefits and the types of hosted feature layers that can be published and detailed the various ArcGIS Data Store types that can be configured for use with ArcGIS Enterprise. In the next chapter, you will review the details of the user-managed approach.

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