Development planning: one ArcGISDynamicMapServiceLayer layer or many FeatureLayer?

SuiHuang

Hi Everybody:

    I am developing a Silverlight application to consum a ArcGIS 10.01 map service that contains a lot of different feature layers. The map service is like

http://sampleserver3.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Network/USA/MapServer

   In the map of the Silverlight application I want to at least:
1. use table of control the display/hide of the layer
2. control whether individual layer is in the table of control or not
3. control whether individual layer's display symbol
4. control the min/max scale
5. allow use to click on (or select rectangle) some layers and do spatial query to select features.
6. the order of the layers
7. use the min/max scale setting of the map service layers

    Now I have two options on how I can add the layers to the map.

1. add multiple feature layers to the map. For example,
****************************************************
<esri:ArcGISDynamicMapServiceLayer ID="a"
   Url="http://sampleserver3.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Network/USA/MapServer/53"/>
<esri:ArcGISDynamicMapServiceLayer ID="b"   
  "http://sampleserver3.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Network/USA/MapServer/54" />
****************************************************

2. add one single ArcGISDynamicMapServiceLayer to the map. For example,
****************************************************
<esri:ArcGISDynamicMapServiceLayer ID="ab"
        Url="http://sampleserver3.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Network/USA/MapServer"/>
****************************************************

    At this moment I don't know which way I should start the development with such that I can satisfy all the requirements, and also make the application easy to extent.

    Can you give me some idea?

    Thank you.


My development environment:
-- .NET 4
-- C# and Visual Studio 2010
-- Silverlight 4
-- ESRI ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF
-- ArcGIS server 10.01 map services

SuiHuang

Hi Jennifer:

    I decide to use a single ArcGISDynamicMapServiceLayer, because that provides better performance by generating image on client side on-the-fly.

    Using individual features would have some drawbacks: the max/min scales in map service wouldn't work, more network traffic, and have a limit on the number of features in the map display.

    Thank you.

You can use either, the following documentation might help you decide which type of layer would best fit your needs: http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/apiref/ESRI.ArcGIS.Client~ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.Layer.html

http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/help/index.html#/Feature_layer/016600000015000000/