Unable to see services or content in ArcGIS Explorer Online, but can in ArcGIS.com

KaraKerksick · ‎05-20-2011

Hi!

For the past few days I have been unable to see my services or my content in ArcGIS Explorer Online, but I can see them in the ArcGIS.com map viewer. Until a couple of days ago, ArcGIS Explorer Online was working successfully with my services and content! I have been troubleshooting this for a couple of days, and have done just about all I can think of to figure out what�??s going on.

Background:
Off and on for the past month I have been testing the usability of ArcGIS Explorer Online and ArcGIS.com. I published a map service in our development ArcServer environment, created and saved a "Map" with this map service and ESRI imagery, and shared to everyone. Both ArcGIS Explorer Online and the ArcGIS.com map viewer successfully displayed the map and my content. I then embedded the ArcGIS Explorer online map in SharePoint and even at this stage in development, it has been very popular and has been in use for the past two weeks.

Issue:
On May 17th, 2011 it came to my attention that the ArcGIS Explorer Online map I had embedded was not working. The map contents now shows a red exclamation point, and when I hover over it I see txt that says �??The source for the layer is inaccessible�?�. After logging in, (still in the explorer viewer) I am also unable to see any services in my content, although I can see the folders. I can see this same map in the ArcGIS.com viewer.

I begin troubleshooting and try a number of things:
�?� In ArcCatalog, confirm that the map service is up, and preview it successfully
�?� In IE, confirm that I can see the map service in the rest endpoint (note: here is the link, although I am pretty sure it will not work for folks unless they are part of our domain and inside our firewall, but when published through an application like ArcGIS.com and shared, you CAN see it from outside our firewall https://test-fortress.wa.gov/dnr/arcgisdevl/ArcGIS/rest/services/Shared/BPA_Utilities_DC_I5Corridor/... )
�?� Go to ArcGIS.com, log in and confirm that all my content is still available and shared to everyone.
�?� Open the map from my content in the arcgis.com map viewer and see my map: http://bit.ly/lpw2CO

Temporary (hopefully)solution?
To get things back up and running for folks, I went through our internal process of submitting a request to our IT division to get my map service pushed up to our QA environment, and on up to PROD: https://fortress.wa.gov/dnr/arcgis/ArcGIS/rest/services/BPA_Projects/MapServer and edited my map and saved to my content in ArcGIS.com. I can see this map in both viewers now (ArcGIS Explorer Online and the ArcGIS.com viewer): http://explorer.arcgis.com/?open=0b49208321c547758c0f74150a8dbc4d

Help!
Because of the difficult and time consuming process that I go through when I need to make any changes to a map service in our Production environment, I REALLY want the ability to publish and see content and services in ArcGIS Explorer Online that are made with map services from our development ArcServer environment �?? just like I have been able to do for weeks now, until just a few days ago.

Any help or insight would be very much appreciated!
Thanks,
Kara

MikeRudden · ‎05-26-2011

Hi,
Having chatted to some colleagues about this, we think the most likely reason for the failure is that you are missing a crossdomain.xml or clientaccesspolicy.xml at the server root. This means that Silverlight cannot directly access the service and all traffic goes via the proxy server.

Heres the blurb from the arcgis Silverlight blog:

�??Silverlight does not allow you to make requests to servers hosted on a different host than your web application. In this case I was running my application on http://localhost/, and trying to access a service on http://myserver/. Silverlight will first verify that the server allows other applications to perform requests against that server. It does this by trying to download a clientaccesspolicy.xml file from the domain. This is a Silverlight access configuration file telling the client who can call the server and which parts it can request. Flex has a similar pattern in place using a crossdomain.xml file.

If it fails to find the clientaccesspolicy.xml file, Silverlight will try and search for Flex�??s crossdomain.xml file and use that instead. If both fail, services on the server will be unavailable (ExplorerOnline reroutes to the proxy server rather than failing), the layer will not be able to initialize itself, and it will not render in the map. You can read more about this Silverlight security feature here, and you can look at the policy file that ArcGIS Online uses here. If your services and application are hosted on the same domain AND port number, this should not be an issue. It�??s worth noting the port constraint, since Visual Studio by default will run the autogenerated test-website on a different port on localhost than your ArcGIS REST services (not to mention that you shouldn�??t be using localhost in the Url for layer since �??localhost�?? would mean something different to each client hitting your Silverlight application).

The cross domain restriction is by far the number one reason for a service failing to load.�?�

Hope this helps

Mike

KaraKerksick · ‎06-01-2011

Hi,

Thanks for the response! I have worked with my IT folks and we can confirm that these policies are in place on our web servers. What is unclear is if they are in place when accessed through the virtual directory and url that our state Dept of Information Services (DIS) set up for and acts as the proxy server (Reverse Proxy) that takes requests from the internet and forwards them to our webserver.

I submitted a ticket to ESRI and they came to the same idea you did! In addition, ESRI sent me this in an email ~
...It looks like ArcGIS Online updates occurred shortly before you started encountering this issue...I'm in the process of testing some things to see if these updates may be causing the issue. I'll follow up shortly with more information.
http://blogs.esri.com/Support/blogs/arcgisonline/archive/2011/05/11/arcgis-online-updates-just-relea...

I am submitting a ticket and transferring the ESRI Incident over to my IT folks, as I dont have read permissions to look and troubleshoot our web servers. They will work with ESRI and our DIS to figure out what is going on.

I will post the solution when we get one! And it very well be all about the crossdomain.xml or clientaccesspolicy.xml. What is confusing to me is why I was able to see them for about 2-3 weeks in arcgis explorer online - and now am not able to. So did something change with ESRI or on our end? It is so hard to troublehsoot stuff like this! Aarrghhh....

Thanks again!
Kara

TarigAhmed1 · ‎03-21-2013

Hello Kara,

Would you please share the solution you found to this problem?
you can email it to me directly if you prefer: tahmed@ntta.org

HoudiniSutherland · ‎10-17-2013

Has this issue been rectified? If so, could one share the details of his/her victory over this repulsive foe, as I too am faced with this catastrophe.

My thanks are extended in advance.

//Houdini