Features services/Geographic Extent Questions

[JenniferRovito]

Two questions hopefully someone can help answer -

Is it possible to set up a feature service without features? Similar to when you would create a feature class with dedicated symbology and then create the features at another time. We are looking to have our users of the web application be able to create features themselves and then have the ability to edit as needed. Is this possible? Do we need to have at least one feature exist in order to do this?

We would like to have the ability to have users select their own geographic extent (limiting it to the contiguous US) after they logon to the application. My thought process is that it would be similar to the bookmark code where a min, max would be held under a particular title. Is this possible to do and save to a database on the server, rather than within the Bookmark widget?

Thank you in advance.

[DominiqueBroux]

Is it possible to set up a feature service without features?

AFAIK, there is no limittaion on the number of feautures when publishing a service (so you should be able to publis a service without features).

Is this possible to do and save to a database on the server, rather than within the Bookmark widget?

There is no builtin functionality for that. But you can develop your own web service to store the extents by user, or, likely easier, you can publish the table of extents with your map service and read/write the table from the cloent with the ArcGIS API.