feeding data from an external server to a map?

[GISDepartmentMFM]

Good afternoon,

I was wondering if anyone had any kind of resources or ideas to point me in the right direction for this task. I have a desktop pro Basic license. I'm wondering if I can feed data from a server that is separate from ESRI servers to a map that will pull from the server in real time?

Im not sure if this issue requires coding or not or if I can even attempt this without an enterprise license?

Any nudge in the right direction would be helpful with this issue. 

[jcarlson]

It probably depends on the server in question and how the data is stored there. You can connect to almost any database via Pro and pull tables into a map. If the tables have a spatial component, Pro will attempt to visualize them accordingly.

Can you give any additional details on the server / data you're trying to add?

[GISDepartmentMFM]

Good Morning Josh,

I had talked to my boss this morning because he knows more about the information than me.

From what he told me our data is stored on an internal server in our office. we need to use our IP address to login to the server. Our data is derived from a computer model that is hosted on the server. I believe he said that data runs on an SQL server. So we would want to have data pulled from the computer model on the server and feed it into a map to be used for web maps later on. 

Additionally, if we can point our desktop to this server, do you know if we would burn storage credits for hosting the data on our own server versus using ESRIs hosted servers? 

[jcarlson · Accepted solution]

My favorite answer to every question: "it depends".

In order to feed the data into a web-accessible format, the database needs to at least be registered with an ArcGIS Server, otherwise the layer will only be accessible in-network. That said, if you do publish it to a standalone server, you can bring that layer anywhere, so long as the service is public.

For example, we have an Enterprise instance with a great many layers. We do use AGOL as well, but for a subset of those layers. We can add them as AGOL content items via their service URL, and this does not use any credits.

You can think of it like adding a program shortcut to another folder. It's not "there", there's just another point of accessing it.

If the data is not registered with an ArcGIS Server instance, the only way to get it on the web is to copy the data into a hosted feature layer of some kind, which will use credits. Additionally, the published layer will only be a snapshot of the data at the time of publishing, and you'll need an additional process in place if the data is to be refreshed.

There are some other means of getting data into a web map, but if your server isn't publicly accessible, they may not apply.