drawing FeatureLayer error:400

Question

When I add a map service to my map as an ArcGISDynamicMapServiceLayer it works as I expect. When I add the same map service as a FeatureLayer it works at larger scales but at smaller scales some of the features render but then one of the GET requests is met with this:

{"error":{"code":400,"message":"Unable to complete operation.","details":[]}}

How do I troubleshoot this? It's not like I'm overwhelming the server with GET requests at the full extent (only 32 features in total) so why does this work at large scales but not small scales?

The only change in my code between dynamic layer and feature layer are the addition of "/0" to the service url in the layer constructor, and the addition of "mode: esri.layers.FeatureLayer.MODE_ONDEMAND" to the parameter list.

Details:
JSAPI 3.4
Firefox 11.0 (Old, I know. It's out of my control!)
ArcGIS Server 10.1

The map service contains 32 point features in web merc. aux. sphere (same projection as map to which it is added).

Thanks,
Ryan

RyanClancy · Answer

is your service public?  if not, can you repro with a public service?  i have a hunch theres something wrong with the extents set for the layer but its hard to say...

The service in question is created by ArcGIS Server as the result of a gp service (I checked off the "View result as map service" box). Is there a way to control the extents of automatically generated map services?

Thanks
Ryan

RyanClancy · Answer

is your service public?  if not, can you repro with a public service?  i have a hunch theres something wrong with the extents set for the layer but its hard to say...

Unfortunately I'm working on a locked down intranet and can't make anything public. Pretty inconvenient, I know. 😞

I'll try to check the layer extents and see what I find.

RyanClancy · Answer

Two more items of relevance:

1 - The map service containing the point features is derived from a GP service. I turned on the "View results with a map service" option on the GP service so that I could do stuff like this. Does this derived map service have some kind of dummy .mxd on the server in which the origin/coordinate system/extent/etc could be causing the problem?

2 - I changed the FeatureLayer mode to SNAPSHOT and this solves the problem for now because the api requests all features in this mode and doesn't use an esriGeometryEnvelope to get features. This is only a temporary solution for me because when we release this app to actual users they'll be doing this with many more features than I tested and we'll want to use ONDEMAND mode.