Share feature layers from an enterprise geodatabase

You can share federated feature layer items with the option to copy data.

Prepare your enterprise geodatabase data

To share feature layers as copies, they must be sync enabled.

To support one-way sharing of edits, as a prerequisite to sharing, the data must be prepared appropriately in the enterprise geodatabase. See required Data preparation steps for non-versioned and versioned data.

To support two-way sharing of edits, starting at 10.9, you can configure a collaboration workspace to allow edits to be shared two-way when feature layers are shared as copies. Types of edits supported include adding new features, editing features, or deleting existing features. Schema updates are not synchronized. To support two-way sharing of edits, data that is non-versioned with archiving or branch versioned must be configured to use the ArcGIS Pro service runtime, have sync enabled, and support replica tracking and bi-directional sync. If the feature layer is published from ArcGIS Pro 2.7 or later with Enable Sync selected, the feature layer will have both replica tracking and bi-directional sync enabled.

The sections below describe the workflow for enabling sync, replica tracking, and bi-directional sync of either non-versioned with archiving enabled, or branch versioned, feature layers as well as feature layers that were published using an older version of ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Desktop.

Scenario: Feature layer was published to ArcGIS Server using ArcMap and has sync enabled. The layer does not support the ArcGIS Pro runtime and does not support replica tracking or bi-directional sync.

Complete the following steps:

1. Browse to ArcGIS Server Manager at https://machine.domain.com:6443/arcgis/manager and sign in as a member with administrative privileges.
2. Browse to Services > Manage Services.
3. In the Manage Services module, locate your service, which will have a Service Runtime of ArcMap, and click Edit Service.
4. On the General tab , browse to the Service Runtime section and click Edit Runtime.
5. In the Edit Runtime dialog box, select ArcGIS Pro and click Apply.
6. Browse to Services > Manage Services.
7. Click the Stop button on the service, stopping the selected service.
8. Open ArcGIS Pro 2.7 or higher and connect to the feature layer's database connection.
9. In ArcGIS Pro, search for the Enable Replica Tracking tool, select the feature layer's feature dataset, and run the tool.
10. Return to ArcGIS Server Manager and browse to Services > Manage Services.
11. Restart the stopped service by clicking the Start button.

The service is now configured to use the ArcGIS Pro runtime and support replica tracking and bi-directional sync.

Caution:

Once replica tracking has been enabled on a layer, the minimum client version is set to ArcGIS Pro 2.6 for versioned data with archiving and branch versioned data. This means you cannot open the data in ArcGIS Desktop or versions of ArcGIS Pro prior to 2.6.

Scenario: Feature layer was published to ArcGIS Server using a version of ArcGIS Pro prior to 2.7 and has sync enabled. The layer supports the ArcGIS Pro runtime but does not support replica tracking or bi-directional sync.

Complete the following steps:

1. Browse to ArcGIS Server Manager at https://machine.domain.com:6443/arcgis/manager and sign in as a member with administrative privileges.
2. Browse to Services > Manage Services.
3. Click the Stop button on the service, stopping the selected service.
4. Open ArcGIS Pro 2.7 or higher and connect to the feature layer's database connection.
5. In ArcGIS Pro, search for the Enable Replica Tracking tool and select the feature layer's feature dataset.
6. Return to ArcGIS Server Manager and browse to Services > Manage Services.
7. Restart the stopped service by clicking the Start button.

The service continues to be configured to use the ArcGIS Pro runtime and now supports replica tracking and bi-directional sync.

Caution:

Once replica tracking has been enabled on a layer, the minimum client version is set to ArcGIS Pro 2.6 for versioned data with archiving and branch versioned data. This means you cannot open the data in ArcGIS Desktop or versions of ArcGIS Pro prior to 2.6.

Publish feature layers from an enterprise geodatabase

There are two approaches to sharing feature layers when the associated data is stored in a registered enterprise geodatabase:

• Use ArcGIS Pro to publish a web feature layer that references registered data
• Use ArcMap to publish a map service with feature access enabled (directly to a federated server)