ArcGIS Server cache from outside wms service

Question

I have an arcgis server web application (version 10.0) that utilizes an external wms service for displaying some information layers on top of a local basemap. This external service has a tendency to be rather slow and buggy so I am wondering if it would be posible to use a remote wms service as a source for creating a local cache from within arcgis server, following its tile scheme.

The method would be something like: a) connect to thewms service in ArcGIS Desktop b) save the mapfile and publish it to our local server c) set the appropriate scales via ArcCatalog d) creating the cache from ArcToolbox

Has anybody tried this approach and are willing to share their experience?

Answer 1

Generally I would not suggest cascading services like this, but it is doable, and there are a few points that you should be aware of:

1. In ArcGIS 10, WMS services were not supported in MSD based services. So we had to use a MXD based service. I am not aware of whether it is supported in ArcGIS 10.1 or not.

2. In your tiling process, you will be making a lot of multiple simultaneous requests to the WMS server in a short period of time. Make sure that that the WMS server will support it, and allows these kinds of requests.

3. Make sure that you use the same Spatial reference for the ArcGIS service as the original WMS service.

4. Use the same image format as the original WMS service.

In our case, we found some JPEG artifacts in the ArcGIS tiles, and that is why we finally went with TileCache to generate the tiles instead ArcGIS Server. We consumed these tiles as a custom tiled layer in our FLEX application.