Mastering ArcGIS Enterprise Administration

What is a service?

Before going any further, let's discuss just what exactly a service is. At its core, ArcGIS Server operates on a spatially enabled service-oriented architecture, or SOA. With an SOA, services are provided by application components through a protocol over a network. For ArcGIS Server, the services are map services, feature services, and so on; the application component providing the service is ArcGIS Server, the protocol is HTTP, and the network could be an intranet, the internet, or both. With ArcGIS Server, think of services as a representation of that service from where it came. Therefore, a map service is a representation of the ArcMap MXD or ArcGIS Pro Map that it was published from and a geoprocessing service is a ...