Hello and happy new year!
I've started researching what steps I need to take in order to allow editing of certain features within my web apps or mobile apps and am getting a little overwhelmed and question some things that I've read. I'm hoping someone can start me on the right track with this by answering some questions so I can then continue learning the necessary steps.
I have all of my data layers in a file geodatabase, managed with ArcGIS Desktop Basic and have ArcGIS Server Workgroup Standard for supporting my web/mobile apps. Currently using Flex and the basic ESRI app to access via mobile. I do not use ArcGIS Online much at all and am unfamiliar with the inner workings. I want to be able to allow some users (currently no one but myself does any editing of our data at all so I have no existing users set up in any place)
- Is a "feature service" the only way to allow for editing via AGS?
- I read here that using a feature service requires an enterprise geodatabase (of which I have no experience). Can you verify that this is the case before I would take the leap to completely change my entire data structure?
- Is there a way via AGO to allow editing without the enterprise gdb?
- I currently use the ESRI mobile app for viewing my map service but it, or Server, doesn't seem to support the ability to have 2 different connections, 1 open publicly and 1 requiring a login for editing. At least this was the case a few years ago when I first set up the JSON for mobile. Is this still the case? Is there some alternative?
- Is "Collector" a better app for this? It seems to be tied to AGO (it asks for a login rather than a way to connect to a map service) and I do not know what the relationship would be like between it and my Server services.
- Before I really dive in, what are the key things, or caveats, I need to keep in mind?
Thanks much for any info you can offer!