topic Re: Editing workflow in Silverlight application. in ArcGIS API for Silverlight Questions

Editing workflow in Silverlight application.

SanajyJadhav — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:34:28 GMT

Hi experts,

We are developing one Silverlight editing application,approx. 50 users would be editing the application.

Now, I am having some hard time to determine the workflow for saving the edits. I want to have few users ( on top of editors) who should be able to first approve these edits and then changes done would be reflected to the feature service. (viewing FeatureService in ArcMap is not an option)

Is there some way by which editors would edit the data but it would not be immediately reflected in the Silverlight apps, rather some people in the back-office would review these changes in the same application( not in ArcMap), approve them and then changes would be reflected.

Can anybody guide me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Sanjay J.

Re: Editing workflow in Silverlight application.

SrivatsavaKamatham — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:07:08 GMT

Sanjay,

Are you using ArcSDE ? I think using the Versioning tool available in ArcMap as a GEOPROCESSOR object in your Silverlight Application can help to create a workflow!!

Re: Editing workflow in Silverlight application.

SanajyJadhav — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:14:46 GMT

Hi Srivatsava Kamatham,

Thanks for the reply.

I m using SDE without which editing in Silverlight API is not possible.

I am bit doubtful about versions since I would have to create 50 child versions for all my Editor users.Maintaining them is not practical.

Does anybody have any other ideas? Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Sanjay

Re: Editing workflow in Silverlight application.

dotMorten_esri — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:23:46 GMT

The Client API's supports what is referred to as "Simple Editing", and these types of complex editing scenarios are not considered part of that. For those type of advanced use cases ArcMap/Engine are better fits.

Re: Editing workflow in Silverlight application.

SanajyJadhav — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 03:23:50 GMT

Thanks Morten for replying to this post.

I used to think that 'Simple Editing' means editing of simple features ( not geometry networks etc..). Anyways, since ESRI is encouraging users for using Web APIs for editing applications and local connections would not be supported after 10.1 version, so we cannot use Web ADF. And reviewing edits in ArcMap is a manual process.

So,I would request if any body has got any workaround for this. Because I think my case would be the standard workflow for any enterprise editing application based on Silverlight API. Without approver, nobody would desire changes directly to be saved to database.

I would really appreciate if anybody who has done this, could share his ideas on this forum. It would be helpful to all users who are looking for such workflow.

Regards,
Sanjay Jadhav.

Re: Editing workflow in Silverlight application.

RichardWatson — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:26:17 GMT

We have a similar problem. What we are doing is that the people doing edits are not really doing edits. The SilverLight client merely records the fact that the user wishes that a certain edit be made. The edits consistent of a set of modify, add, and delete actions which we save to non-versioned tables. Once the user is happy with the changes then they submit them to the desktop for review. On the desktop (i.e. ArcMap) the user creates a version and then plays back the edits (using a custom tool). The play back tool allows the user to accept, reject, or modify the edits as needed. In essence, the edits are actually made on the desktop. After this is done then the desktop user posts the approved changes which the web users then see.

As an alternative, you can also have 2 map services which each have their own web application. One of the services has the edits and the other does not. The problem with normal editting is that it is difficult to provide a review function because ESRI does not support partial post (and in fact doing so is rather difficult).

I am interested to hear what others are doing about this problem. The current ESRI design is only scalable if there is a small number of versions. To contrast, in our desktop world, each user has their own version.

Richard Watson

Re: Editing workflow in Silverlight application.

SanajyJadhav — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 03:03:56 GMT

Richards,

Thanks a lot for sharing your information and suggestions.

In my case, as I have informed,editing features using ArcMap would not be the feasible option.We want to avoid this manual step at all.Also maintaining 2 services and 2 applications can be quite difficult in our scenario as there would be at least 8/9 editable layers.Keeping track of all this thing would be complex.

I am just looking forward to get more ideas from users regarding this issue.

Regards,
Sanjay.