Geocoding Service 'Suggest' capability returns error when composite locator includes Esri World Geocoding Service

[TobiasFimpel]

When I build a publish a Geocoding Service from a composite locator that includes Esri's World Geocoding service as one of its address locators (in addition to a file-based address locator) the suggest capability of my service always returns the message "Unable to complete operation."

Neither the ArcGIS Server Documentation nor the ArcGIS Online REST API Documentations states that what I am trying to do should not work. Has anybody been able to do this? 

[HannesGrothkopf]

Hello,

I am getting the same error with my Composite Locator. It is composed of two Address Locators I created. One of them is hosted as a Geocoding Service, the other is located on my PC. Both the Geocoding Service and the Address Locator are configured identically. The Geocoding Service on its own can be requested via the suggest interface.

The Composite Locator is published to an ArcGIS Server. The used Geocoding Service is hosted on the same ArcGIS Server as the Composite Locator gets published to.

There is no output in the ArcGIS Server log related to this error.

I am using ArcMap 10.5.1, ArcGIS Server 10.31 AND 10.51 (both versions produce the error)

[TobiasFimpel]

Thank you Hannes for confirming the behavior that I am seeing. If you find a way to make it work or a definite answer that it is in fact a software bug please let me know, I'd appreciate that.

[JonathanQuinn]

You can't publish a cascading map service, (map service within a map service) starting at 10.1, but I'm not sure if that means that cascading geocode services also are unsupported as well. I'm not entirely surprised that workflow doesn't work, to be honest.

[TobiasFimpel]

Thank you Jonathan for weighing in. I agree with your notion that there is a good chance this might simply be not supported functionality. It would be nice to have that either stated in the software documentation or told by somebody from Esri who designs/builds this component of the software...do you know who we could ping about this?  Thank you in advance.

[HannesGrothkopf]

Hey Jonathan, thank you for commenting on this issue. As far as I understand the documentation on Creating a composite address locator correctly, creating of cascading Geocode Services by embedding existing services is possible in general. ("A composite address locator consists of two or more individual address locators and/or geocode services.")

I can use the findAddressCandidates interface of such a Composite Geocode Service which also indicates to me that cascading is possible.

Unfortunately the documentation does not mention anything about the suggest functionality. Do all of the involved locators/geocode services have to have suggesting enabled? How 'similar' do they have to be configured in general?

[JonathanQuinn]

fimpe0011 Unfortunately, I don't have a specific contact you can reach out to. Your best bet may be to contact Support so they can go through the proper channels to determine if this is a bug or some limitation.

hannes.grothkopf‌ Yes, I see that it says that, but that's the Desktop documentation.  I don't see anything about publishing that as a geocode service, and definitely nothing about suggest.  I'd reiterate my suggestion to contact Support so they can chase this down properly.

[HannesGrothkopf]

Thank you, I will contact the support.

[MathisGaarde_Kristensen]

Hi Hannes, we are experiencing the exact same problem. Did you manage to solve it and if so how?