ArcGIS Server 10 Requires A Custom Extent To Be Set When Using Mobile Data Access

Those using ArcGIS Server 10 might come across this issue when publishing map services with mobile data access capabilities.

In the past it was OK to publish an MXD as a map service with mobile data access capabilities enabled as long as it contained supported layers. However using ArcGIS Server 10, you will receive the following error message when trying to start a map service with mobile data access capabilities enabled.

Now this message isn’t very useful and might be confusing to a number of users. So turning logging onto verbose and interrogating the log files we fine the following error message:

MobileServer requires a custom extent to be set. The default extent is not acceptable (union of all layers).

This describes exactly what the problem is! Basically you cannot use the default extent anymore. You have to specify a custom extent before publishing your MXD as a map service and enabling mobile data access capabilities.

This is a simple change. Double-click on your Data Frame and select the Data Frame tab. For a default MXD this should look something like this.

Under Extent Used By Full Extent Command, you need to select Other and then click Specify Extent.

When this window comes up, you want to select Custom Extent.

 

Save the MXD and start your map service. This should start fine this time and mobile data access capabilities should be available.

This is a very useful change when using ArcGIS Mobile as on the clients you have the ability to request data from the server as one of the options is to request data at full extent. For a large complex map document this can take a long time or even fail to work so setting a custom full extent allows the application to request data for the full extent which has been customised.

A knowledge base article around this has been published as well. This can viewed here: http://resources.arcgis.com/content/…