Caching

The creation of a cache is not appropriate for services based on numeric values (elevation, slope, aspect), since the cache will be an 8-bit (grayscale single band or RGB color) visualization, typically a compressed JPEG.

For visualizations of elevation data (hillshade, color maps of slope or aspect, and so on), you may have to consider creating a cached image service, but typically this is not compulsory. For representations such as slope map and aspect map, serving directly using image services is generally sufficient.

For users who do want to fully optimize the performance of elevation access, one potential option is to create a service that serves elevation but has Hillshade as the default raster function. Publish this service with caching on and set the schema to ArcGIS Online with suitable levels. Set caching to Create tiles on demand and Update cache manually. After publishing the service, use Manage Tiles to pregenerate the cache for the smaller scale and areas that users are expected to visit more frequently. When users access this service through ArcGIS 10.1 for Desktop, they will be able to get fast access to the cached hillshade. If they zoom to areas that have not cached, the appropriate areas will be cached on demand. They will still be able to configure ArcGIS for Desktop to not use the caching as well as use selectable raster functions to see the other defined functions and get data values or other less common representations.

There are sometimes cases where you may want to create a static cache of a hillshade or other cartographic representation to incorporate into other maps. The best way to do this is to either use the server caching as defined above, or use the Manage Tile Cache tool that is available on ArcGIS for Desktop from version 10.1 SP1. Once the cache is created, it can be directly used as a raster dataset or incorporated into a map cache.