Buffer as feature service

[KarstenRank]

Hi there,

is it possible to build a web app widget that creates a buffer (e.g. geoprocessing service) and then builds the buffer in a new / existing feature service of the web map?

Normally I get a graphic and this is not shareable, like a feature service.

Thanks for your help!

Greetings,

Karsten

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Karsten,

   The simple answer is yes, you can. But I am no GP expert to be able to give advice on how to model this in ArcMAP so that you have a functioning GP Service that does the buffering and Map Service creation. The good news is that once you get the GP Service built then you can easily consume it using the geoprocessing widget in WAB. If you need advice on creating the GP the appropriate location to ask about that would be in the Geoprocessing​ space.

[XanderBakker · Accepted solution]

Indeed the simple answer is yes. Create a geoprocessing service that calculates a buffer around a geometry (or set of geometries) is not very complex. However, there are some things that influence the result.

If your service yields a featureset (output parameter), it will be a graphic for which you can define the symbology in the Geoprocessing widget, but that is not what you want, since it will be a temporal graphic.

If you make a physical output, writing to a geodatabase then you might be able to share it. Make sure you don't write to the scratch workspace, since that will be a temporal result and will be removed by the server.

So, you will probably have to write to a central location (geodatabase) from which a service can provide it to other users. There are a few complications that may arise:

• Geodatabase can be locked by service making it impossible to write to
• Geodatabase may contain multiple buffer results, so you will have to implement some mechanism, so that only the one you want to share is displayed.

[KarstenRank]

Thank you Robert and Xander.