Disable geometry editing on referenced sde data in Enterprise

[TomAP]

I'm publishing referenced feature layers from SDE to ArcGIS Enterprise (11.5) and have disabled geometry editing during publishing (via ArcGIS Pro 3.5 and Server Manager), but users can still edit geometry in the Web Editor. Portal settings like “Update attributes only” don’t seem to restrict geometry edits. Is there a way to enforce geometry editing restrictions for referenced layers, or is this a known limitation?

[Joshua-Young]

If your SDE allows and you don't need any editing, you could try publishing the service with a read only data connection to SDE. That should at least cause SDE to reject any edit submissions. I would also recommend creating a support ticket with Esri because that is a serious data integrity issue if Web Editor is indeed bypassing the disable edit geometry setting. I am going to see how Web Editor behaves in my environment.

[bbollin]

Hi @TomAP and @Joshua-Young. I tested this on an 11.5 portal with a referenced feature layer, then restricted the update geometry capabilities in server manager. When I signed in as a user who has access to edit this data, I saw the update tools and permissions appropriately restricted/unavailable.

Are you an owner or administrator of the dataset you are working with? As an owner/admin, you'll have full capabilities to edit the data regardless of the settings. However, the settings are honored for any non owners/non administrators 

[Joshua-Young]

We are on ArcGIS Enterprise 11.5 as well and using SQL Server 2022 for SDE. I tried as well with a referenced branched versioned feature layer. The editing was set to "Attributes only" and a standard account, owner account, and admin account could not edit the geometry in Web Editor. All the geometry tools were greyed out with the standard account. The move tool is available in Web Editor to the owner and admin accounts, but trying to move a feature causes it to snap right back to the original location.

[bbollin]

@Joshua-Young, Good news on the standard accounts, it sounds like it is working as expected there. For the owner/admin case, you said you're using a versioned layer? Out of curiosity, is this behavior something you see in a version? Or when you are trying to edit the SDE.Default (no version created)?

[Joshua-Young]

The behavior was on a version. We try not to edit the default.