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Suggest default visible layers from WMS/WFS services

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04-06-2020 11:00 AM
Status: Open
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RogerLindholm
Emerging Contributor

It would be good to be able to indicate to a consuming client which WMS/WFS sublayer should be enabled by default when the service is added to an application.


That is, maybe indicate this via some layer keyword or the like. Of course, it is possible to come up with some keywords for our specific services, but it would be better if there was something "standardized" that could be used.

As I understand it, today the first 20 layers of added WMS/WFS services are activated in ArcGIS Pro and the first 10 in ArcMap. Instead, it would be good to be able to provide "suggestions" to the client from the server service which layers should be lit. In this way, uniform configuration between different consumer applications could be simplified.

Unfortunately the WMS specification does not provide a real standard to do this as far as I'm aware, so having a ArcGIS specific standard keyword would suffice. I.e. add a specific keyword to layers that the map creator thinks is a good set of default layers, when published via ArcGIS Portal to ArcGIS Server via ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap. Also implement logic in ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap that reads layer keywords when a WMS/WFS service is added to a map configuration, and enable layers those with the keyword set.

Many systems have a large number of consumer applications on a large number of clients and often rather inexperienced users that "just want a good-looking map", which means that the need for this type of central control is huge. Especially since many services contain tens to hundreds of individual layers.

One alternative option to use is support for OGC WMC where this kind of configuration parameters can be provided (hidden), but in practice very few consuming applications have support for WMC. Providing a "standard" keyword would be an easy to implement alternative. Using such a keyword application specific configuration scripts can easily configure the suggested layers.