Which is faster...when publish. Have geodatabase layers 'registered' or copied over

[AnastasiaAourik]

I have some basic boundary data such as Shale Basins, Shale Plays, States, Counties, etc that RARELY change.
These are stored in enterprise geodatabase sde 10.1 in microsoft sql server.
Since they rarely change, and are not too large, would performance on ARCGIS SERVER related to a map service that
uses all these layers be faster if I
a.  Registered the data source  or
b.  Have the data copied to ArcGIS Server when publishing service.

I publish my service in ArcMap using that File - Share As Service tool

Can someone direct me to a document regarding performance metrics on these 2 options.

Thanks,aa

[JasonKolbow]

Hey Anastasia,

If you're going to be utilizing other feature classes from that enterprise SQL Database, I would just recommend registering the data source.  However, if these features are the only items from SQL that you're utilizing from that enterprise solution, copying them over to your server would be a safe bet.

I apologize that I was unable to find a document / whitepaper comparing the metrics of these implementation methods.

The performance between the two should be similar based off what I have been playing around with on the 10.1 side.

I hope this helps.

JMK

[JonathanQuinn]

The performance in publishing the service will be much quicker when registering the data source, but as for the performance of the resulting service, there wouldn't be a difference.  If this data is not changing, you might as well just cache it.  The performance of the map will be much better, and we typically recommend caching static data.