Publish a Locator Service with a place-name alias table

Question

I am trying to publish a locator service with support for a place-name alias table, in ArcGIS for Server 10.3.

It should function similar to the Esri World Geocode Server which allows users to search for place names such as "Starbucks" over an extent.

So far I have not been able to publish the locator when the alias table is attached. I found this article which describes how the place-name tables are not supported with published services.

Does anyone know how Esri was able to accomplish this with the World Geocode Server?

Answer 1

We tried to solve this problem directly inside the locator:

<alias_list name="CityAliases">
      <alias_def>
        <alt>New York</alt>
        <alt>NY</alt>
        <alt>etc</alt>
      </alias_def>
      <alias_def>
        <alt>Portland</alt>
        <altPT</alt>
        <alt>ARE</alt>
        <alt>UAE</alt>
        <alt>blbalbla</alt>
      </alias_def>
      <alias_def>

The first (alt) New York describes the original name from the attribute table, the following (alt) are the alternative names NY etc

This worked for the Locator in 10.2.2. I did not try that with the new locator, But right now I am on in, because we upgraded our Server to 10.3 :-)