Hosted tiled map services
Subscription:Publishing hosted services requires an account that is part of an ArcGIS Online organization. See Getting started for more information.
Tiled map services support fast visualization of large datasets using a collection of pre-drawn map images, or tiles. Tiled map services provide geographic context for your operational layers. For example, you might include a tiled map service of streets in your neighborhood to provide a visual reference for the street signs in your feature service layer.
There are several ways you can create a tiled map service in ArcGIS Online:
- Upload your map and data and allow ArcGIS Online to create the tiles. Learn more
- Build your tiles in ArcGIS for Desktop and upload them to the server. Learn more
- Allow ArcGIS Online to create tiles for an existing hosted feature service, thereby giving you both a tiled map service and a feature service. Learn more
Hosted tiled map services are useful when you need to expose a map on the web for visualization, but you do not have your own GIS server. They're also an easy way to share certain maps with an Internet audience if your own GIS server cannot be made public.
Because the image tiles are pre-created, they cannot be edited. You may choose to include a supporting service in your application that can provide pop-up window information for a tiled map service.
Processing time for tiles created by ArcGIS Online
In general, the time it takes to generate the tiles for a particular map is based on the spatial extent of the map to be cached, the number of layers in the map, and the load on the system at the time that the map is being processed. ArcGIS Online is designed to scale automatically (by adding computing power) as load increases. However, lags are possible in the cases where the system experiences drastic load.
When ArcGIS Online creates tiles, it partitions the map into spatial extents that are drawn in parallel. If your data contains many extents, the entire process may take minutes or hours to complete. The process is asynchronous, which means the caching process continues if you close the application from which the publication was performed.