Original User: oearleyFirstly, apologies for the length of this post but it clearly steps through the issue.I have been struggling with the new idea of publishing GP services only after having run them in ArcMap �?? others have already raised some of my concerns in this thread: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/61461-publishing-a-geoprocessing-toolboxAnyway, running a script in ArcMap first raises an interesting behavior concerning default values.This is a test python script to demonstrate the issue:p0 = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(0)
p1 = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(1)
p2 = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(2)
# Test/replace input values
if p1 == "#" or not p1:
p1 = 'NULL'
if p2 == "#" or not p2:
p2 = 'NULL'
output = '{0}-{1}-{2}'.format(p0,p1,p2)
arcpy.SetParameterAsText(3, output)No default values are set in the script parameters:[ATTACH=CONFIG]34074[/ATTACH]Run in ArcMapI then run the script in ArcMap with the following values:p0 = Ap1 = Bp2 = The result is what I expected, output = 'A-B-NULL'[ATTACH=CONFIG]34075[/ATTACH]Publish to ServerI right-click on the result and publish to server �?? this takes over 10 minutes to complete (9+ minutes to stage and 48 seconds to publish). This is a 10 line script with 3 input parameters and 1 output, no processing at all beyond a couple of conditional statements and a single string concatenation. It takes less than a second to run the script in ArcMap.[ATTACH=CONFIG]34076[/ATTACH]Bonus question: The machine this is running on is a fairly old work PC but what is ArcGIS doing that could possibly take this long?Test a Submit JobI navigate to the GP service tool, for example:http://myserver/arcgis/rest/services/testScript/GPServer/Test%20Script/submitJob
The web user interface displays the values used when running the script in ArcMap as the default values (not the values set in the Test Script Properties). If I clear the optional p1 parameter and run the tool I would expect to get the result: A-NULL-NULLHowever, when the tool is run the submit job user interface shows the parameter values as:Input Parameter: p0 (Test Script){ "paramName": "p0", "dataType": "GPString", "value": "A"}Input Parameter: p1 (Test Script){ "paramName": "p1", "dataType": "GPString"}Note the absence of a value for p1.Input Parameter: p2 (Test Script){ "paramName": "p2", "dataType": "GPString"}Result Parameter: Output (Test Script){ "paramName": "Output", "dataType": "GPString", "value": "A-B-NULL"}Why is the original value �??B�?? used when I explicitly cleared it? - a null value should have been passed into the script.To me, a default value has a very different meaning to a null value. If this parameter is optional a null value is totally acceptable and should not be replaced with the default (displayed) value.I will look at modifying my other scripts to use null values when running them in ArcMap before publishing but this looks like either a bug or a bad design decision.Cheers,Owen
