Are Raster Catalogs not supported?

[DerekGray]

Hi,

We're finding that map packages referencing layers in Raster Catalogs are not working. Is this a known issue? The alternative, Mosaic datasets, I know from this forum is not yet supported.

With large amounts of imagery, we must have a way of organizing it - are Raster Catalogs going to be supported by 10.1 ?

Thanks,

Derek

[MichaelBranscomb]

Hi,

What type of raster catalog are you using: 1) Old DBF catalog, 2) Managed GDB raster catalog or 3) Unmanaged GDB raster catalog?

Raster catalogs are supported by the ArcGIS Runtime and will be packaged, however unless the raster catalog is in an Enterprise Geodatabase the rasters will be incorporated in the Map Package. I believe this requires some more investigation.

However, the good news is that we hope to support Mosaic Datasets (in a standard local dynamic map service) sooner than previously expected. Local Image services are a longer term goal (post 1st release).

Cheers

Mike

[DerekGray]

Hi Mike,

Thanks - and sorry I meant to say we are using "unmanaged". And we want to reference the data, and not include it in the map package.

[MichaelBranscomb]

Hi,

Map Packages can reference data externally to the package, but this must be via an absolute path because the Map Package is by nature meant to be portable and the unpack location cannot be predicted (i.e. although currently packages are always unpacked to the user profile, in the future, users of ArcGIS for Desktop will be able to choose their default unpack location and developers working with the ArcGIS Runtime will be able to set the unpack location via the API).

There are two strategies for absolute paths:

1. UNC paths: For working with UNC paths, folder shares can be created with the NET SHARE command (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490712.aspx) or alternatively if the current user is in the administrators group on the local machine then you can use the default administrative share (e.g. \\localhost\c$). There may be other options within Java for this too.
2. Virtual drives: Mapping a virtual drive to a physical folder on disk can be done via the SUBST command (e.g. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491006.aspx). There may be other options within Java for this too.

The rasters should be added to the Unmanaged Raster Catalog via UNC path and the raster catalog should also be added to ArcMap via a UNC path. Then once packaged, the map package will only reference the external geodatabase containing the raster catalog.

Cheers

Mike

[DerekGray]

Thanks for the info.

What we found was that there was some kind of non-deterministic bug where the package got corrupted when being overwritten after an update we made. When we explicitly deleted the package on the file system and re-created, we couldn't reproduce the problem.

So, seems to be working now. If we can reproduce the corruption we'll let you know.