Can a database view participate in distributed collaboration?

Question

We use database views to filter datasets and remove fields not needed for the intended users. Can a database view participate in a distributed collaboration using sync instead of reference?

I would like ArcGIS Enterprise (AGE) to sync some database views based feature services to ArcGIS Online (AGO) for public use. I want to use sync instead of reference to keep public traffic off of AGE and to take advantage of scaling in AGO. I made sure that the GlobalID field is include in the view's definition but I get an error saying the data is not configured for sync. I cannot enable Archiving or versioning on the view, but the parent table has both enabled.

DavidHoy · Answer

Hi Joshua,
maybe you could consider creating a Materialized View (MV) in your SQL Server and register that as a feature class and use it in your map source?
One potential problem with this approach may be that any update in your source tables may trigger a complete refresh of the entire MV and that would then result in a full upload to AGOL each time the MV was refreshed.

ArchitSrivastava · Answer

Hello @Joshua-Young,

The services published through database views would not allow us the capability for the below reasons:

* Feature services do not support publishing from Database Views:* https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/server/latest/publish-services/windows/prepare-data-for-feature-services.htm#GUID-6C906CA5-54C8-4E9F-BDB8-8BC4A23FC485

* As they are "virtual table whose contents are defined by a query" and by design they do not support the base capabilities required for sharing content with Sync Capability.

Furthermore, even if I "Register with Geodatabase" these capabilities would not be available as they are not supported on a view. Kindly find some screenshots below:

I tried to do some digging from SQL Server side itself and it doesn't seem possible, below is the documentation set I am trying to research from:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/views/views?view=sql-server-ver16

Furthermore, I think the solution you have may be the only way.

Hope it helps!

joyoung_kerrvilletx · Answer

@ArchitSrivastava thank you for the information but I am trying to get distributed collaboration with database views working through a copy/sync operation instead of using a reference. Based on my further testing yesterday, I do not believe it is possible for a database view to participate in a sync operation.

Looks like I will be publishing copies of the database views to AGO instead and use a scheduled python script to overwrite the data on AGO. Distributed collaboration would be great if it was not so limited.