troubleshoot SOE: Can't assign authority metadata to this spatial reference object because it is empty

[847396730]

I just upgraded our ArcGIS Servers to version 10.3, and now I get this error when attempting to use a server object extension which worked before the upgrade.  I have tried reissuing the extension, to no avail. I have attached the server log, but Googling these errors just brings me to pages of... error lists, not descriptions or solutions.  Any suggestions?

[DavidAglietti · Accepted solution]

We were able to figure out what is happening and how to work around it so I'll document it here for posterity.  Our SOE utilizes the IGeometryServer.FindSRbyWKID method.  Our code had been passing a value of "EPSG" for the optional authority parameter.  This worked fine until we upgraded to 10.3 server, when we started seeing the "Can't assign authority metadata to this spatial reference object because it is empty" error.  Apparently the inclusion of a string for the authority parameter results in the method returning an empty spatial reference, even if your WKID is legit.  Luckily this parameter is optional so the workaround is to simply pass an empty string ("") for this parameter and the method will work again, returning a valid spatial reference object.  We went ahead and logged this as a bug with ESRI too.