Does refreshing a Service causes it to lose previously assigned symbology if new rasters are added before refreshing?

[RehanChaudhary]

i have an image service based on a raster dataset and it's "hasLiveData" property is set to true. I have enabled this service to be automatically updated whenever the source data is updated but this requires me to refresh the service. My question is if i refresh the service, will this affect the symbology that has been previously assigned to the service?

[LongDinh]

Hi RehanChaudhary,

Think of the service as a standardised web connection between your client (user) and data sources (databases). The service will display the data as defined in the service property.

Restarting a service should not affect the symbology defined in your service that was published. Where there is no symbology defined in your value range, the default is used. If there is no default, it is usually not displayed. 

Re-publishing the service will redefine your symbology if it has changed.

I believe for live data image services, it may take some time for the cache to be generated by the Image Server hosting your service. The time to cache may vary with your deployment's specifications.

Hope this information helps!

[RehanChaudhary]

@LongDinh thanks for the response. just a small query. would it also not affect the symbology even if its defined on ArcGIS Online? So i publish a service and then style it on ArcGIS Online, save it and then update the service and then refresh the service. 

[LongDinh · Accepted solution]

Hi @RehanChaudhary ,

If you are publishing from a web map, then the web map should be separate to the service. So you will need to publish the web map in order to update the service's symbology.

When you save symbology in ArcGIS Online, you are generally saving the Web Map object's symbology and not the service. This is referred to dynamic symbology i.e. allowing the user to define the map symbology. 

The Web Map object is only a representation (a view) of a set of services/layers/tables. So, if you republish a service, it may have a negative effect on your map object.

For example, if the name of your field changes, the Web Map object's symbology may not be referring to the correct name to be able to generate its map symbology. However, if values in an existing data source are edited (e.g. inserted, updated, or deleted), I believe the Web Map should update accordingly (so long as the symbology fits the data ranges). 

Since you are using ArcGIS Online, you can search for your item using AGO Assistant (https://ago-assistant.esri.com/ ). ArcGIS Online items can be edited and saved by accessing the item's JSON which defines the object's settings. Feel free to have a browse on how things are defined.