Rebuild Geocode Service

Question

Our organization hosts several geocode services from both regular and composite address locators. As we all should know, it is important to rebuild an address locator as changes are made to the reference data. Since the locator gets copied to the server, rebuilding the original locator is not sufficient so I've found the entire service needs to also be "rebuilt" (overwritten). We will create scheduled tasks that run a Python script to automate this process. Having experienced the nightmare that occurs when an address locator gets "corrupted" and cannot be rebuilt, I have made the choice to simply recreate the locator each time instead of rebuilding it. The advantage of this method is that you aren't dead in the water should something tragic happen to the original locator because the specifications for creating it are in the script. Alternatively, you could just ensure the specifications of the locator are well documented in the script and just do a rebuild. Either way, the geocode service still needs to get republished with the new address locator reference data. Here is a simplified process I use to rebuild a geocode service. * Create temporary directory where the address locator and service definition files will be staged. This is cleaned up automatically when the script ends. * Create address locator * Create and analyze service definition draft file for sharing the address locator * Modify Service Definition Draft file to overwrite the existing service. * Convert Service Definition Draft to a Service Definition file * Upload and publish service definition file as a service To clarify, this was all tested on 10.2.2. import arcpy from contextlib import contextmanager import datetime import os import shutil import tempfile import xml.dom.minidom as DOM ## sddTypeReplacement() def main(): # Local variables agsconn = r"C: est\MyAdminArcGISServerConnection.ags" sdeconn = r"C: est\MySDEConnection.sde" my_fancy_source_data = os.path.join(sdeconn, "my_fancy_source_data") locator_name = "MY_FANCY_LOCATOR" with makeTempDir() as temp_dir: # Create address locator temp_locator = os.path.join(temp_dir, locator_name) field_info=( "'Feature ID' OBJECTID VISIBLE NONE;" "'*House Number' ADDR_NUM VISIBLE NONE;" "Side VISIBLE NONE;" "'Prefix Direction' PRE_DIR VISIBLE NONE;" "'Prefix Type' VISIBLE NONE;" "'*Street Name' NAME VISIBLE NONE;" "'Suffix Type' STREET_TYPE VISIBLE NONE;" "'Suffix Direction' SUF_DIR VISIBLE NONE;" "'City or Place' VISIBLE NONE;" "'ZIP Code' VISIBLE NONE;" "State VISIBLE NONE;" "Longitude VISIBLE NONE;" "Latitude VISIBLE NONE;" "'Street ID' VISIBLE NONE;" "'Min X value for extent' VISIBLE NONE;" "'Max X value for extent' VISIBLE NONE;" "'Min Y value for extent' VISIBLE NONE;" "'Max Y value for extent' VISIBLE NONE;" "'Additional Field' VISIBLE NONE;" "'Altname JoinID' VISIBLE NONE" ) arcpy.CreateAddressLocator_geocoding( "US Address - Single House", ## in_address_locator_style "'{}' 'Primary Table'".format(my_fancy_source_data), ## in_reference_data field_info, ## in_field_map temp_locator ) # Create and analyze service definition draft file sddraft = os.path.join(temp_dir, locator_name+".sddraft") sdd_analyze_result = arcpy.CreateGeocodeSDDraft( temp_locator, ## in_address_locator sddraft, ## out_sddraft locator_name, ## service_name "FROM_CONNECTION_FILE", ## server_type agsconn, ## connection_file_path folder_name="Geocoders", summary="Created by Python script {}".format( datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") ) ) # Inspect analyze result """result object of CreateGeocodeSDDraft is a dictionary of dictionaries structured like { 'errors': {}, 'messages': {}, 'warnings': { (u'Warning message', 9999): [], (u'Warning message', 9999): [] } } """ ## Check for error messages to create the issues list. ## If there are no analyze errors, analyze_issues will be empty list [] analyze_issues = sdd_analyze_result.get("errors").keys() ## Check for warning messages and add them to the issues list. ## Only include those that aren't in the ignore list. warn_ignore = [ ('Missing Summary in Item Description', 97), ('Missing Tags in Item Description', 98), ('Locator will be copied to the server', 24044) ] analyze_issues += [ warn for warn in sdd_analyze_result.get("warnings").keys() if warn not in warn_ignore ] if analyze_issues: raise Exception( "Analyzing the service definition draft revealed an issue. " "{}".format(analyze_issues) ) else: # Modify Service Definition Draft file to overwrite the existing service sddTypeReplacement(sddraft) # Convert Service Definition Draft to a Service Definition file. ## Staging compiles all the necessary information needed to publish ## the GIS resource. If your data is not registered with the server, ## the data will be added when the Service Definition Draft file is staged. service_definition = os.path.join(temp_dir, locator_name+".sd") arcpy.StageService_server(sddraft, service_definition) # Upload and publish service definition file as a service arcpy.server.UploadServiceDefinition(service_definition, agsconn) return arcpy.GetMessages() ## end if analyze_issues ## end with temp_dir def sddTypeReplacement(service_definition_draft): """Modifies a service definition draft file to overwrite an existing service instead of the defaut to create a new service. This function based on Esri example code for arcpy.UploadServiceDefinition_server() Requires module xml.dom.minidom as DOM Takes string input parameter of the path to a service definition draft file. I did test overwriting a service without this function and it seems to work fine. However, I kept it because Esri took the effort to post the code example in the documentation and there must be a good reason. Futher investigation may be helpful in understanding this. """ xml_doc = DOM.parse(service_definition_draft) descriptions = xml_doc.getElementsByTagName("Type") for desc in descriptions: if desc.parentNode.tagName == "SVCManifest": if desc.hasChildNodes(): desc.firstChild.data = "esriServiceDefinitionType_Replacement" with open(service_definition_draft, 'w') as f: xml_doc.writexml(f) @contextmanager def makeTempDir(): """Creates a temporary folder and returns the full path name. Use in with statement to delete the folder and all contents on exit. Requires contextlib contextmanager, shutil, and tempfile modules. """ temp_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp() try: yield temp_dir finally: shutil.rmtree(temp_dir) # Script start if __name__ == '__main__': main()‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ I will be also adapting this same process for rebuilding geocode services with a composite locator. As always, suggestions are welcome! P.S. When I got this vague error, I found it was caused by incorrect field names in the field info for the in_field_map parameter of arcpy.CreateAddressLocator_geocoding() ERROR 000042: Failed to create the address locator. Underlying DBMS error [ORA-00923: FROM keyword not found where expected]

StefanChapkanski1 · Answer

Why don't you give it a try?

Creating a composite address locator—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

The composite address locator stores only references to the participating address locators and geocode services; it does not contain the actual address information, indexes, and data of the individual locators.

blake.terhune · Answer

Stefan Chapkanski wrote:

Note that I am not rebuilding the composite locator, because it is only a reference to the simple ones. I should mention some additional steps I did before compiling my models. I went to the AGS system directory (through ArcMap) checked the locators, and manually run rebuild function just to be sure everything is OK. I needed to make a change of the reference data location by pointing to the original GDB (registered in AGS).

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your process, but I don't think you can simply rebuild the underlying locators of a composite locator. You have to recreate the composite locator each time a participating locator is rebuilt.

Rebuild Address Locator—Help | ArcGIS Desktop

Composite address locators cannot be rebuilt using this tool. The best practice for managing composite locators is to create a composite locator using the Create Composite Address Locator tool in a geoprocessing model. In ModelBuilder, you can also chain the tool with the Create Address Locator tool to use its outputs as the inputs to the composite locator and manage the entire process of creating or updating a composite address locator.

StefanChapkanski1 · Answer

Joe... I've never experienced this bug, but as far I can find info about it Esri suggestion is to use Rebuild Address Locator gp tool. When you overwrite an existing service restarting is handled by AGS. Basically if your data source is not registered within AGS and you are trying to publish service based on that data then AGS needs to be able to use it. What happens then is described in here - Copying data to the server automatically when publishing. The advantage of having your DB and/or folders registered is that you are allowing AGS to have an access. In the other scenario AGS still needs that data in order to run your services and then copy all the necessary data. In other words you can update your registered data and the changes will be available in the service. More about it you can find here.