Update time extent without restarting Map Service?

[JasonGreenlaw]

Does anyone know if it is possible to update the time extent of a map service without restarting it?

I have a map service with a single layer whose source is a Mosaic Dataset.  The MD is stored in an enterprise geodatabase (SDE) and I have modified the attribute table to have start & end time fields, and the map service was published with time enabled.  I also checked the box that says something like "Data changes frequently so calculate time extent automatically".

My data does change pretty frequently (several times per day), so I am constantly adding and removing rasters from the MD and updating their time fields accordingly.  However, the map service's time extent (as reported on the REST service description page and via WMS GetCapabilities) is not updated until I perform a service restart.

Restarting the service each time the data changes is not an option for me since it will change so frequently.  I tried looking around the Administrator Directory but couldn't find anything related to updating/refreshing the time extent.

I am using ArcGIS Server 10.1 Prerelease on Linux (64-bit RHEL6).

Any information would be appreciated.
Jason

[JasonGreenlaw]

Also, I'm not sure why this topic was moved into the 10.0 and prior forum - this used to be in the 10.1 Prerelease forum, so it should probably be moved to ArcGIS Server 10.1 General.

[TobiasFimpel]

Hello,
I would very much like to add this functionality to my application that uses timeslider. I completely understand what you write, but I have only very limited javascript skills. Would you mind sharing with me how I can have my javascript code make this call the [...]/MapServer?returnUpdates=true&f=json html and how I can then pick the two values and assign them to two variables (startTime, endTime). I would very much appreciate your help. Thanks!