Pop Ups and Query Capabilities for Vector Tiles

[CameronLacelle]

We have been working to migrate a GIS Viewer application we have for our municipal employees that is based on open source software to our Enterprise Portal using Experience Builder and MapViewer. It has been quite slow so I've explored using Vector Tiles for displaying features to speed things up but have read that you cannot have pop-ups or queries/other interactivity with a Vector Tile Layer in MapViewer currently. 

We resort instead to using Map Image Layers which is slower than the Vector Tile but at least has the interactivity but the more layers we add to the map, the slower the performance. Having interactivity with vector tiles is a much needed feature in MapViewer.

[Kevin_MacLeod]

haha.  I began asking that immediately when vector tiles came out 12 years ago.  Vector tile layers are amazing. But... no Identify. Trust me, the Basemaps director she is aware. I ask her every UC. 😄  She's awesome, and vector basemaps and tile layers have continued to gain capability and I do think this will eventually happen.

For now, the crutch there is still to publish a "twin" FeatureServer layer. (or MapServer) it's very burdensome to literally have a duplicate version of every layer in a web viewer, one for display and one identifying.  But that's how it is.  Show the vector tile layer; hide symbology for the featureServer 'twin' service but point Identify and other widgets that need featureserver to that.  That's why that option in Pro is there now when you go to publish.

I hope they work on this and combine the two. One endpoint; with both capabilities.  Full FeatureServer capability with the powerful and fast vector tile layer (pbf) for display.   

Or MapServer for Identify actually, since FeatureServer is very slow with hundreds of thousands of polygons. Even with all the stops pulled out. (in wkid 3857, on C drive, in GDB on the web server, all the tricks... feature server will grind your server to a halt unless you have multiple sites; thus, use MapServer. Feature Server only needed for editing and a few other advanced things; but for points and lines it's usually fine, I use mapServer just for parcel layers or things like )