WFS : Enable maximum number of features : Don't set too high

[MarkChilcott]

Hi Peoples,

If you are using ArcGIS Server, with WFS capability enabled, then pay attention to the help files, and set the "Enable maximum number of feature" to a reasonable level.  The default is 1000.

If you set the value too high, it will write large files to the server output directory, and in our case, crash the server.  Our server ran out of memory, the disk thrashed, and the gluster share had a melt down and took the whole site down.  This is server that is used to handling millions of requests a week.

Our fault - we should have paid more attention and not set this value as high as we did with a more testing.

Cheers,

Mark

[MarkChilcott]

Hi Peoples,

This is a little bit more of a problem than first thought.

It would appear that if you do not explicitly set the maximum number of feature, the default of 1000 is not honored.  Thus a request attempts to download the entire feature class to the server output directory, which for a large feature class, with multiple requests, has a good chance of crashing ArcGIS Server.

Cheers,

Mark

[XanderBakker]

There is a nice post by Katie Cullen‌: How to update the Max Record Count of a Feature Service in REST that you might want to look at.

Kind regards, Xander

[MarkChilcott · Accepted solution]

Hi Peoples,

BUG-000083357: WFS service returns all features if maximum number of features is not specified in the request parameters and WFS configuration.

Therefore as a word of caution, ensure you explicitly set this value.

Cheers,

Mark