Service Definition File Size

[DanIrwin]

I am publishing a service from ArcMap 10.8.1 into ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 (federated with Portal) but I'm noticing that this one service is generating a massive SDDraft file during the publishing process. Normally they would be around 2-3Mb, but this one is ~400Mb!

For reference we have a development environment which we publish to first and this is nowhere near that size (the usual 2-3Mb) but on our Production environment it suddenly jumps. There are warnings when I analyze the mxd ahead of publishing, but only the ones we usually get, mostly around the fact that many of the layers are linear referencing event layers (our development environment gets these too) but nothing else to indicate that the SDDraft will be so huge! Don't get me wrong, the thing does successfully publish (although it takes a long time!) but I just wanted to understand and fix this issue in case it should lead to further trouble down the road.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Dan

[TonyContreras_Frisco_TX]

The only warning I would expect to see is one that the data source is not registered and the data will be copied to the server. Have you tried using ArcGIS Pro to publish the service? It will provide the best experience for sharing geographic data, especially to ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online.

[DanIrwin]

Unfortunately we are still trying to get to Pro (local government with all the associated problems that entails). Yeah, I've seen the data source not registered error before but this isn't showing that, and the whole thing publishes fine, just takes a while, but it's got my Spidey senses tingling that something ain't right!

[TanuHoque]

@DanIrwin 

are you asking about .sddraft or .sd file?

.sddraft is just an xml file. Can you pls open .sddraft in a notepad or something to see the content and compare with the other ones (smaller in size) to find out what is the extra information you have in there?

[DanIrwin]

Hi there,

Apologies, this is by publishing directly as a service (not actually creating an .sddraft or .sd file, i just assumed that it creates a .sddraft file as part of the process), it's just when publishing and the publishing dialog says creating service definition that this massive file size appears in brackets after the message. I've just created a .sd file of the service and it's only about 3Mb in size, which is what I would expect. For reference I've republished again and taken a screenshot of the moment during publishing that it says this.

 

[TonyContreras_Frisco_TX]

Do you see any large files when you look at the published service files?

<path to directory folders>\directories\arcgissystem\arcgisinput\<servicename.MapServer>

[DanIrwin]

Hi there, I do indeed! a00000009.gdbtable is the file in question, no idea what this is though, don't work much with gdbs, mostly Oracle for data storage...

[TonyContreras_Frisco_TX]

Can you open the FGDB in Catalog and see what data is being stored there? That will give you an idea of what got copied to the server. How to keep it from getting copied is another story, but hopefully it will lead you there.

[DanIrwin]

Ah ok, yeah, it's a registered view from the database that is being copied out into the gdb. Not sure why though, will take a look at other environments and see if I can spot the difference!

Many thanks!