Introduction

Publishing data by reference in ArcGIS Enterprise allows organizations to efficiently manage and share geospatial information while maintaining data integrity between the source geodatabase and the web feature service. This approach enables users to publish web feature layers directly from an enterprise geodatabase, ensuring that the data remains centralized and authoritative. In this section, we will guide you through the essential steps of signing in to your ArcGIS Enterprise portal through ArcGIS Pro, connecting to the enterprise geodatabase, and preparing your data for publication. By publishing a web feature layer that references a registered data store, you can streamline access to your geospatial resources and enhance the use of your data across various applications.

Tutorial 11: Publish a web feature service from ArcGIS Pro

In this tutorial, you will assume the role of a GIS specialist for Medio County. In this fictional scenario, the county’s GIS department is transitioning from direct database editing to web-based editing within ArcGIS Enterprise. The purpose of this transition is to facilitate an authoritative data flow between the source geodatabase and the clients accessing that data through web feature services. Your first task in this project is to share the department’s data as a web feature layer to ArcGIS Enterprise.

To complete your task, you’ll establish a connection to the enterprise geodatabase, which serves as the primary data repository for the department. To prepare the data for sharing, you will enable geodatabase capabilities, including global IDs and editor tracking. Then you will publish a web feature service that references the data in the enterprise geodatabase.

Connect to an enterprise geodatabase

You will connect to the department enterprise geodatabase as a database user that has privileges to load data.

1. Open ArcGIS Pro. Under New Project, click Map. Save your map as Medio Project.
2. In the upper-right corner of the screen, click the profile picture icon to sign in. Click Manage Portals.
3. On the Portals page, click Add Portal.

   Depending on the portals, if any, that you are connected to, you may see other portals listed. If you already see the portal listed, you can skip the step to add the portal and proceed to making it the active portal.

4. In the Add Portal dialog box, type the URL for your portal and click OK. . On the item page, click Download.

   The dataset is downloaded as a copy on your local machine. You will unzip the file on your local machine and then add it as a folder connection to your ArcGIS Pro project.

13. Unzip the data folder.
14. Back to ArcGIS Pro, in the Catalog pane, right-click the Folders folder and then click Add Folder Connection.
15. Navigate to the folder where the downloaded file geodatabase is located and then click OK.

    The folder is now listed in the Catalog pane, under active folders.

16. Expand the file geodatabase. It contains three feature classes:
    • City_Boundaries: A polygon feature class that represents the city boundaries in Medio County.
    • Road_Centerlines: A polyline feature class that represents all major and local roads in the city.
    • Schools: A point feature class that represents the locations of all the schools in the city.
17. Press the Ctrl key and select all three feature classes.
18. With the selection active, drag the three feature classes and drop them into your enterprise geodatabase.
19. When the operation finishes, right-click the database connection and click Refresh.

    Notice how the database username is included in the feature class names. This makes it easier to indicate the data owner of these feature classes.

20. Next, you will prepare the data for publishing.

Prepare data for publishing

In this section, you will get familiar with the data. You will also add Global IDs and enable editor tracking to facilitate the web-editing experience on the published data.

1. In the Catalog pane, within the database connection, right-click the first feature class, City_Boundaries, and then click Manage.
2. On the Manage tab, check the following capabilities:
   • Enable Global IDs as a prerequisite for the publishing process, which is necessary for maintaining object uniqueness.
   • Enable Editor tracking to maintain a record of the editor who created or modified the data and a time stamp of when the edit occurred. Many organizations find editor tracking helpful to maintain accountability and transparency.
   • Enable Archiving as a prerequisite to enabling the syncing capability on the feature layer. This allows an editor to take the data offline, make edits in the field, and then synchronize the edits once they are connected to the internet again.
   • Enable Replica Tracking as a prerequisite needed when sharing your data with an ArcGIS Online organization using distributed collaboration.
3. When done, click OK.

   

4. Repeat the previous steps to prepare the other two feature classes for publishing.
5. Multiselect all three feature classes from the enterprise geodatabase and then click and drag them to the map.

   

   Now that the data is prepared and added to the map, the next step is to publish the department’s data to the ArcGIS Enterprise portal. To do that, you will first connect to your organization portal.

Publish data to the portal

In this final part of the tutorial, you will connect to your organization portal from ArcGIS Pro. You will use the Share As Web Layer tool to publish the feature classes from your enterprise geodatabase as a web feature layer.

1. On the Quick Access toolbar at the top, click the Save Project button.

   Next, you will publish the data.

2. On the ribbon, click the Share tab. In the Share As group, click Web Layer.

   The Share As Web Layer pane appears. Here, you can enter the parameters for the web layer and analyze it for errors before publishing.

3. In the Share As Web Layer pane, enter the following information:
   • Name: Medio Public Assets.
   • Summary: This web layer represents the legacy data of Medio County, GIS Department. It includes the city boundaries, road centerlines, and school locations.
   • Tags: public assets, data management, Medio County, Esri.

   Next, you will complete the Data and Layer Type information. To share data that references registered data, a map image layer is automatically included. To support feature querying, visualization, and editing, you must also enable the Feature option. This will create a web feature layer and a map image layer in your portal.

4. For Data and Layer Type, under Reference registered data, check the box for Feature.

   

5. For Location, under Portal Folder, click the drop-down menu and select Create new folder. For the folder’s name, type County Assets.

   You will use this folder to store all the department’s layers.

6. For Sharing Level, click Organization.

   Checking your enterprise organization ensures all members of your organization will have access to this web layer. Next, you will analyze the web layer to check for errors.

7. At the top of the pane, click the Configuration tab.
8. Under Layer(s), next to Feature, click the Configure Web Layer Properties (pencil icon).
9. For Operations, check the box for Enable Sync.

   This allows editors to take the data offline.

10. At the bottom of the pane, for Sync, change the Version Creation to None.

    This is because your data is not versioned, so all the edits will be synchronized directly with the database.

11. Under Finish Sharing, click Analyze.

    Several errors and warnings are returned. You must address all errors before publishing, but you can leave the warnings.

12. Expand the error regarding the data source being registered with the server.

    

    The first error indicates the layer data source is not registered with the server. You are publishing three feature layers, so there are three errors. To address these errors, you will register the MedioDB enterprise geodatabase with the ArcGIS Server site by creating a data store item.

    Note: When you publish web services to ArcGIS Enterprise and choose to reference registered data, the data source must be registered with ArcGIS Server. This registration allows the server to access your data and use it as the source for web layers. Creating a data store is the key to making your data accessible to the server. A data store can be any location—enterprise database, folder, cloud store, or NoSQL database—that houses the data you want to use. After registering the data with the server, the published web service establishes a direct connection to the data source. This connection ensures that the web services reference the data in the data store without duplicating it.
13. Expand the first error and right-click the first one. Click Register Data Source With Server.
14. In the Add Data Store window, provide the connection details for the data store:
    • Title: MedioDB_DataStore
    • Tags: public assets, data management, Medio County, Esri
    • Portal Folder: County Assets
    • Sharing Level: ArcGIS Enterprise
15. Click the Validate button to validate the server database connection.

    

16. Click Create.

    A check mark appears in front of the first server message, which indicates the layer’s data source is registered with the server.

    Although it appears that you must register the other two layers, adding the data store one time will correct the issue for all layers with the same error because all the data is stored in the same geodatabase. When you analyze the web layer again, those errors will be resolved.

17. Click Analyze.

    The errors regarding registering the data with the server are resolved. Finally, you will clear the last error by assigning unique numeric IDs. Assignment of unique IDs is a requirement when sharing data as a web layer. It ensures layer IDs remain static when the web layer or service is overwritten.

18. Right-click the Unique numeric IDs are not assigned error message and click Auto-Assign IDs Sequentially.

    The error is resolved. You will now publish the web layer.

19. Click Publish.

    After the publishing process is complete, at the bottom of the pane, a message confirms the web layers have been successfully shared. The message also contains a link to manage the web layers in your ArcGIS Enterprise portal. You will use this link to access the web layers directly in the ArcGIS Enterprise portal.

20. Click the Manage the web layer link.

    If necessary, in the upper-right corner of the page, sign in with the same portal account to access the published data.

    The item page for the web layer you published appears on a browser tab.

21. On the navigation bar, click the Content tab. Navigate to the County Assets folder and view its contents.

    The Public Assets folder contains three portal items that were created when you published the Medio Public Assets web layer:

    • A data store item that ensures the ArcGIS Server site has access to the published data.
    • A map image layer that is available only if you are sharing to an ArcGIS Enterprise portal. It is automatically created when you publish data by referencing a registered data store.
    • A feature layer that supports vector querying, visualization, and editing.

Summary

In this chapter, you assumed the role of a GIS specialist for Medio County, successfully completing the initial task of the project. You shared the county’s data as a web feature service to ArcGIS Enterprise, supporting the department’s transition from direct database editing to a web-based editing approach. As a data owner, you established a database connection to the department’s enterprise geodatabase and used that connection to import data from a file geodatabase. After the data was integrated, you enhanced the feature classes by adding global IDs and enabling editor tracking. Finally, you published the legacy data from ArcGIS Pro by referencing data from the enterprise geodatabase. In the next chapter, you will explore the web-based editing experience using both ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro.

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