Feature Storage - Conversion File Size's

Question

Is there any research on file size change when publishing data to ArcGIS online as feature storage.  For instance, if I have a 100 mb File GeoDatabase, when I publish that in its entirety to AGOL, does that equal 100 mb of storage on AGOL.  Does this number/ratio differ if my GDB is compressed, or is a SHP?

KellyGerrow · Answer

Hi Bret,

Thanks for the additional information. As a very general ball park figure that should be used for loose estimates, feature storage may be 10X  the size of the compressed database, assuming there are no attachments or data complexities. As I've mentioned above, uploading the data for accurate data storage is the most accurate way to estimate the data and be aware that editing data once its published can also increase size. If you do use this figure for an estimate let us know how it compares to the actual storage size or if most of your data has complexities that makes the estimate inaccurate.

-Kelly

BretWhiteley · Answer

Hi Kelly,

Your assumption is correct, I am doing a budgeting exercise.  We have quite a few clients that are wondering what credit usage they would need to move their data into AGOL.  While I realize the complexity in different data types and how those data will be stored differently as Feature Services, a tool (even rudimentary) that would allow for size estimations would really be useful.  It seems laborious to publish the data (in some cases multiple GB's) to determine what the credit usage would be.  I would expect that if a tool was not built, a white paper could be written - which might lead to tool development  
.

Thanks for your responses to this thread, I appreciate the time you have taken!

Bret

KellyGerrow · Answer

Hey Bret,

It is expected that the data will be much larger when stored as a hosted feature service than as a compressed file. The data in a hosted feature service in ArcGIS Online is stored in an uncompressed format. The size may vary between the file geodatabase on disc and the storage size in ArcGIS Online depending on the data so there is no firm rule that determines how large a hosted service will be in relation to its FGDB size as the data is stored in different ways.

The best way to determine the actual storage size is to upload the data and note the size, if it seems larger than you would expect (50 MB for a 10 record service) check to see if you can reduce the size by generalizing geometry (if appropriate), reducing the number of fields (if appropriate).

If you enable optimized feature drawing or do a lot of offline editing, the feature storage can also increase in size due to additional geometry stored with optimized feature drawings and edit tracking replicas with offline storage. These can cause storage sizes to increase after the initial publishing. Tech support can always help if the storage size seems different than you expect.

Are you looking to gauge the size for budget planning? What would you like to be able to achieve with estimating the storage size?

-Kelly