What is the future for geodata services?

Anonymous User

We wish to be able to replicate enterprise geodatabase feature classes and allow 2-way editing of the replicated feature classes. Looking at the possible ways to do this, it appears that there are 3 options:

1. Geodatabase replication.
   
   This method has been around for a long time and is well-tested and understood. However, the replication occurs at the geodatabase level and requires opening up the firewall in one environment to allow geodatabase connection from the other environment.
2. Geodatabase replication using a geodata service.
   
   This works as well as geodatabase replication, and has the additional advantage that no additional ports need to be opened in the firewall, as synchronization happens through the REST endpoint of the geodatabase service. However, the ArcGIS Pro documentation refers to geodata services as "legacy" and there is little support for them in ArcGIS Pro.
3. 2-way editing using distributed collaboration.
   
   It doesn't appear that 2-way editing using distributed collaboration supports the scenario in which both copies are geodatabase feature classes.

So, my questions are:

1. Are geodata services truly "legacy", in that they will be retired at some point in the future?
2. How does one implement replication between enterprise geodatabase feature classes at the service level (i.e., without having to open up the firewall to perform synchronization at the database level)?

 

 

Anonymous User

After discussing with Esri Canada staff, it sounds like geodata services will be supported for the foreseeable future, and that the ability to publish them will be added in a future release of ArcGIS Pro. So, it looks like this is the best way to synchronize geodatabase feature classes without having to open a firewall port to allow database access.