Latest Contributions by MDB_GIS

I am pretty new to using Portal, so forgive me if this is a dumb question. I have published our parcel fabric as a referenced feature service. That being said, on occasion, I want to use parcels in other maps without having to worry about the end user being able to edit the data. I would love to be able to create a "View" of the feature service, but that can only be done if it were shared as a copy. So, what is the best workflow here? The only alternative I see is to publish a second copy of the parcel fabric as a copy, but now we have a second version of the layer that does not stay synchronized with the source data, which just adds to the administrative headache on my end. What am I missing here? ... View more

Not a question, but just wanted to share a script that has been helpful for us. In the past we attempted to use this incredible script created by @jcarlson to scan our organization to figure out where feature layers were being used. The script is amazing and worked for many people, but not for us. It ran, and appeared to be working, but after a few seconds, it would hang and then never complete. It took us a long time to figure out why, but we finally did.  We had some old App Studio applications in our ArcGIS Online organization. These are classified as "Native Applications," which get lumped in with the scripts scan of all applications in the organization. Once we added a debug function to list the layer being scanned, we found that it was getting hung on those native applications every time. We had to add in a segment to skip that application type, but once we did, it worked flawlessly. Here is our full code, which will skip Native Application item types if they are causing issues for you. """ Script to find where a specific AGOL layer is used within an ArcGIS Online organization. This tool connects to your AGOL org, searches specified item types for references to the layer's URL or item ID, and summarizes the results. """ # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Import & Warning Suppression # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- import warnings from urllib3.exceptions import InsecureRequestWarning # Suppress "Unverified HTTPS request" warnings for cleaner output warnings.simplefilter("ignore", InsecureRequestWarning) import os import json import pandas as pd from arcgis.gis import GIS # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- # CONFIGURATION – set these before running # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ORG_URL = "https://YOUR ORG HERE.arcgis.com/" # Your AGOL organization URL USERNAME = "AGOL_USERNAME" # Your AGOL username PASSWORD = "AGOL_PASSWORD" # Your AGOL password LAYER_ID = "292q8e3ff7b94837a8f373c946bz1c5b" # Item ID of the layer to search for ITEM_TYPES = ["Web Map", "Application"] # Which item types to scan MAX_ITEMS = 5000 # Max items per search (-1 for no limit) # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- def find_usage(gis, layer_id): """ Search for references to a layer in specified item types. Parameters: gis (arcgis.gis.GIS): Authenticated GIS object. layer_id (str): Item ID of the target layer. Returns: dict: Keys are item types; values are lists of items where the layer is found. """ # Retrieve the layer item and its service URL layer_item = gis.content.get(layer_id) layer_url = layer_item.url usage = {} for item_type in ITEM_TYPES: # Map generic 'Application' to true web mapping apps actual_type = ( "Web Mapping Application" if item_type.lower() == "application" else item_type ) # Fetch all items of this type items = gis.content.search(query="", item_type=actual_type, max_items=MAX_ITEMS) print(f"[DEBUG] {actual_type}: {len(items)} items to scan") found = [] for it in items: # Log which item is being checked print(f"[DEBUG] Scanning {it.id} — {it.title}") # Skip Native Applications to avoid hangs if it.type.startswith("Native Application"): print(f"[DEBUG] Skipping native app {it.id}") continue try: # Pull JSON payload and check for layer URL or ID payload = json.dumps(it.get_data()) if layer_url in payload or layer_id in payload: found.append(it) except Exception as e: print(f"[WARN] Error fetching {it.id}: {e}") print(f"[DEBUG] → {len(found)} matches in {actual_type}\n") usage[item_type] = found return usage def summarize(usage): """ Print a summary table of items that reference the layer. Parameters: usage (dict): Output from find_usage(), mapping item types to item lists. """ for itype, items in usage.items(): header = f"\n{itype}s referencing layer:\n" + "-" * (len(itype) + 12) print(header) if not items: print(" None found") continue # Build a DataFrame for legibility df = pd.DataFrame([{ 'title': it.title, 'id': it.id, 'owner': it.owner } for it in items]) print(df.to_string(index=False)) def main(): """ Main execution flow: validate config, connect to AGOL, run search, and output results. """ # Ensure password is provided if not PASSWORD: print("ERROR: AGOL_PASSWORD environment variable not found. Exiting.") return # Inform user of connection attempt print(f"→ Connecting to {ORG_URL} as {USERNAME}…") try: gis = GIS(ORG_URL, USERNAME, PASSWORD) print("✔ Connected successfully.\n") except Exception as e: print(f"✖ Failed to connect: {e}") return # Perform the usage search print(f"→ Searching for usage of layer '{LAYER_ID}' in item types {ITEM_TYPES}…") usage = find_usage(gis, LAYER_ID) # Output a concise summary summarize(usage) print("\n→ Done.") if __name__ == '__main__': main()     ... View more

We purchased 3 inch pixel resolution aerial imager for our county this year. I have loaded it into a mosaic dataset and it works well at first. However I have noticed that after the map has been open for some time, the imagery performance seems to get worse. It will occasionally glitch out and only a portion of the imager will show. Sometimes the imagery will show up, but it will be with a reddish hue. Things like that. Usually you can fix the glitch by zooming in or out or panning the screen. But eventually the imagery will stop drawing in altogether until ArcGIS Pro is restarted. It's very annoying to constantly have to restart pro. Any ideas what the problem could be?  Some general info, the uncompressed data is about 500GB. It is stored in a mosaic dataset that is on an enterprise geodatabase on a pretty beefy GIS server. I don't have the exact specs for the server, however. My PC is also pretty powerful. It has 32GB of RAM as well as a dedicated Nvidia GPU. So I don't really believe it to be a hardware issue. I've rebuilt it from scratch several times and always get the same issue.    Screenshot of the issue:    ... View more

I don't understand why map image layers are locked together in a group. I have map image layers from our portal to ArcGIS Online so that the public can see, but not edit some of our data. When I add that layer to my map, it gets added as a group and it cannot be ungrouped. This is very frustrating.  There is a wonky workaround. If you add each individual rest service as an item to AGOL, then you will be able to pull the layers in one at a time, but obviously this requires a lot more setup and seems a bit pointless to have to go through all of that.  ... View more