Build 1700 - GIS Services other than ArcGIS Online do not draw

[MichaelSebhat]

Adding GIS Services using "Add Content..." to AGX 1700 from our ArcGIS Server fails to draw map. But adds the Layer and shows the Legend. No errors. No problems contacting and adding the Service. The same services called from ArcMap show up fine, whether internal or external to our network.

The map properties Projection settings in AGX make no difference. Publishing in WGS84 makes no change. Publishing in WGS84-Mercator_Aux-Sphere makes no change.

Is there some know bug or have I lost the plot somewhere?

Any clue would be useful. Thanks

Gear: Windows 7 - i5 32 bit - 4 GB RAM
AGX Build 1700
ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 services....

[MarkBockenhauer]

With default ArcGIS Server settings for dynamic mapservices when ArcGIS Explorer 2D makes a request to the server image files are written to the "arcgisoutput" folder on the server.  ArcGIS Explorer downloads the images from this folder.

The request that ArcGIS Explorer makes will be something like:

http://<server>/arcgisoutput/_ags_mapd164d97f465e46fd886ab9c5f64f6dbb.png

My best guess is that security settings on the server are not allowing the ArcGIS Explorer client to access the images from the arcgisoutput folder.  You can check this by using a web debugger to see if the internet request is being blocked by the server.

On a windows server you can check the security setting on the output folder in IIS Manager.

[MichaelSebhat]

Checked all IIS permissions and network team have checked firewalls - all seems ok.
The output folder has all agsusers, agsadmin with full control and Internet guest account (IUSR WGP etc.) all set to read execute etc.

If ArcMap can get an image from the service - why can't AGX is the question from the network gurus watching the firewall...

Still no Mappy... Not a happy bunny...

[MarkBockenhauer]

Looking at this further we uncoverd an error in ArcGIS Explorer 2D when it is fetching information from a server that is setup in a reverse proxy or virtualized environment.

If you use an HTTP debugger you might see something like: (example is made up the URLs are not real)
http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/services/demographics/MapServer

Followed by a failed request for an image:
http://serverx/arcgisoutput/_ags_mapb71db130f8314cd0a26891b589ebefce.png

If you were to open a web browser and replace serverx in the failed request with services.arcgisonline.com...

http://services.arcgisonline.com/arcgisoutput/_ags_mapb71db130f8314cd0a26891b589ebefce.png

and it displays the PNG image in the webbrowser,  the problem you are having is due to a bug in ArcGIS Explorer.   This problem is fixed in the next release (1750).  We are still working on a couple more issues, but expect to have ArcGIS Explorer 1750 available for download within the next 3 weeks.

For 1750 users (users of the future as of this writing) that read this forum posting.  In a reverse proxy server situation, ArcGIS Explorer makes requests on 4 threads.  Each thread will create one failed request, and then switch to another method for fetching the tiles from the server. So, seeing failed requests in a web debugger is not always unexpected.

Mark