Merge or Join Mosaic datasets in ArcGIS10

Question

Hello,

I am attempting to update several large collections of ortho-photography that are managed as Mosaic Datsets (and later used to build cached map services). I have found that after I add the the updated rasters to the existing mosaic datsets the process of updating the overviews is extremely time consuming (it appears that Arc wants to recreate more than half of the overviews, and after 4 days it only processed 10% of them). I have found that I can create a new raster dataset containing only the new rasters in about 16 hours.

So my questions are.

Is there a way to merge or import 1 mosaic dataset into another? I have added the one mosaic to another (add rasters) using the "table" data type with limited success (several of the coarser overviews do not function correctly nor can I seem to rebuild them).

Is there a way I can parse out the generation of overview images across several instances of arcmap processes?

Is there a way to use a mosaic dataset in a map service (to generate a cache) without first generating the overviews?

Thanks for any help anyone here can offer!

James

deleted-user-NBi-sopW8_xg · Answer

I'm still looking into your information to see what I can find because those are some massive datasets.
I just had a question about your third question on the map service.  Are you trying to do a map service or image service?  You should be able to generate a cache without overviews for an image service as long as you start at the largest scale and cache up to the smaller scales (or do all scales at once if it works with your imagery).

Ultimately it will be a Map Service. We are still at v10 of server which (if my understanding is correct) doesn't support cached imagery services. I am assuming that when caching a mosaic dataset (via a map service) that server uses the overviews to generate the smaller scale layers.

Thanks again.
James

JenniferMcCall4 · Answer

I'm still looking into your information to see what I can find because those are some massive datasets.
I just had a question about your third question on the map service.  Are you trying to do a map service or image service?  You should be able to generate a cache without overviews for an image service as long as you start at the largest scale and cache up to the smaller scales (or do all scales at once if it works with your imagery).

deleted-user-NBi-sopW8_xg · Answer

Hi Jenn,

I haven't tried that because I am assuming that won't work. The datasets I am updating are each 3+TB in size (uncompressed 3 band TIFFs). Color correction is not a large issue as the tiles have already been corrected. Given the additional information is their a raster format you think might work?

It also occurred to me that I have built overviews for imagery of similar volume (3+TB), in 3-4 days. Just adding to my current data was going to take 10 times as long? The key differences; * The tiles in the current set are larger 12500px vs 5000px  
* In the current imagery I am adding UTM rasters to a Web Mercator mosaic datset, in the faster set I kept the UTM projection of the imagery for the mosaic.

My thought is to try to rebuild the mosaic from scratch to see if that speeds things up, or (and this would be a lot more work) split the tiles up into smaller tiles.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for your fast response.
James