Just got an email about disconnected mobile??!

[LisaT]

Hi,  I have been asking our ESRI reps for months about whether there was disconnected mode for ANY of the new mobile API's and have received a consistent "no" answer.  My company is supposedly on the list to hear about this FIRST THING.  However, I just got a marketing piece in my email inbox saying:
??? Work disconnected in the field and synchronize your updates using a hosted feature service.

This is not in the "new features" section of the email, but instead listed as a current feature.  Can anyone expand on this?  We are currently using the API for Windows mobile 6.5 because we have remote locations without internet access.  Is it possible to now upgrade devices and use "ArcGIS for Windows Mobile 10.1.1"?  We need the capability to update/add/delete features and attributes in the field, and then synchronize the changes with our geodatabase.  We can do this with 6.5 but have been told numerout times that it cannot be done with the new API.  We do not want our data in the cloud somewhere, we want to sync to our database...just as the 6.5 mobilecache sync process does.

Anyone have info on this?  What is the 'hosted feature service" mentioned in the bullet above??  Is this extracted mapcache, or is this referencing the ability to have internet connection in the field and pushing your data up to the cloud? 

Thanks for any info you can provide.

[AkhilParujanwala]

Hi there, I personally don't use Windows Mobile 6.5, but instead use Windows XP and 7.
Here's how our application works in offline mode.

I am using ArcGIS 10.0 and will be switching to 10.1 in the next 6 months.

1) Connect to the ArcGIS Server and download the Mobilecache of a mobile service.
2) Take laptop/tablet running Windows out onto the field without internet, create, edit and delete features (all of my layers are points).
3) Field teams would come back to our command center and connect the computer to our network and press a button to synchronize the data.

The whole purpose of using ArcGIS Mobile or ArcGIS for Windows Mobile is that you can do offline data collection and go online via a cell connection or physically connecting the computer to your network and then synchronizing the data.

In addition, my application knows if it is online or offline and then does or does not synchronize the data simultaneously as data is changed.

I am not sure if this information will help you but I hope it gives you a clear idea of how I use my application.


Regards,

Akhil P.