We have recently added capabilities for WMS and offline caching to our premium data services and would appreciate feedback from our customers so that we can ensure that these capabilities meet your requirements.
If you are already a customer of our Premium Online Content then you can start using these straight away.
If you are not already a customer of these services then you can find out more about them and register your interest here. Free 30 days trials are available for customers who are licenced to use the premium Ordnance Survey data (e.g. under the PSMA).
WMS
We have added a WMS service to each of our premium data services so that you can now access this data in non-Esri applications and clients. Many of our customers have been asking for this so that they do not have to maintain their own local WMS services to support partner and legacy applications.
You can access the WMS services using the following url: http://datahub.esriuk.com/arcgiswms/services/<folder>/<service>/MapServer/WMSServer substituting in the folder and map service as appropriate, so for the OS MasterMap Service the URL is http://datahub.esriuk.com/arcgiswms/services/gb_basemap/os_mm_carto/MapServer/WMSServer
(see the table below for the folder and service names of the other premium services).
These services use Basic Authentication using your standard Online Content Services username and password and are available with both http and https.
There are a few things to be aware of:
– Some clients require the initial url to include:
?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.3.0&REQUEST=GetCapabilities. Check your client documentation for details.
– The map services are provided in British National Grid. If other coordinate systems are required the transformations need to be completed on the client side.
– The WMS version supported is 1.3.0.
– WMTS is not supported (please let us know if this is something you would like to see added).
– The WMS capability has not been enabled for the 10K Raster map service (which is now replaced by the VML Raster service).
– Some clients have been known to draw or request the layers in reverse order. If this is the case, load each of the required layers individually or set the ordering on connection.
– The WMS capability is only available for the premium map services and has not been enabled for the free map services.
– You cannot use these WMS services from ArcGIS Online (as ArcGIS Online does not currently support secured WMS services). However, you can of course use the map services already available directly within ArcGIS Online.
Offline Caches
We have also enabled offline caching for our premium data services. This means that you can now use our premium content services with Collector for ArcGIS in offline mode. For more information on offline caching please refer to the help here.
To create a webmap which uses the premium data for offline caching you need to:
i) open a new Map in ArcGIS Online,
ii) choose to Add > Add Layer From Web,
iii) enter the URL of the premium service you want to use e.g. http://datahub.esriuk.com/arcgis/rest/services/gb_basemap/os_mm_carto/MapServer,
iv) tick “use as Basemap” and then “Add Layer”,
v) you will be prompted to enter your credentials for UK content, click OK and the premium map layer is added as your basemap. If you want to you can add additional layers that me be useful out in the field,
vi) save your webmap – if you check the details, you should see that “Offline Mode” is enabled.
When you sign-in to Collector you should see your webmap and it will have a ‘cloud’ icon, to enable you to download it to the device and work offline. You will be prompted once for the UK Content username and password.
Please be aware that there is a known issue using Collector in offline mode and accessing secured services that have been added as items to ArcGIS Online with credentials stored with the item. The workaround is to not store the credentials in ArcGIS Online, however this will mean you will need to enter the credentials once in each session within Collector.
There is a maximum cache size for each map service based on an area of 2 miles square which equates to the following number of tiles:
Map Service
Maximum Tile Count
gb_basemap/os_mm_carto
2500
gb_basemap/os_vml_mm_carto
2500
gb_basemap/os_vml_carto
600
gb_background/os_25k_raster
200
gb_background/os_50k_raster
70
gb_background/os_vml_colour_raster
600
gb_background/os_premium_rasters
600