O V E R V I E W

Image Services

An image service provides a mosaic image view of a large collection of images and a catalog view of the same image collection.

 

An image service can be published from a raster dataset, a raster layer, a 9.3 ArcGIS Image Server (AIS) service definition file (ISCDef), or a mosaic dataset. A mosaic dataset (or simply, a mosaic), introduced at 10.0, is a type of dataset in the geodatabase that defines a virtual mosaic of a collection of images.

 

An image service published from a raster dataset or a raster layer is a special case, and it only supports the mosaic image view.

 

Image services offer the following capabilities:

 

 

Images are returned in a byte array and arranged in a band interleaved by pixel format plus a "NoData" mask. The byte array can be optionally compressed using JPEG (plus transparency), and LZ77 compression. Images can also be returned in a well-known format as MIME data, or a URL. The supported well-known image formats include JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF.

 

Catalog items are returned as a RecordSet whose items contain footprints and other visible fields in the image service catalog, but do not contain actual raster values. The corresponding raster values can be returned through GetImage or ExportImage with a Lock Raster mosaic method ("esriMosaicLockRaster") or through Download method which will download the original images.

 

A raster, in general, refers to an individual image (raster) in a raster catalog item, a row in a raster catalog. A raster ID (RID) is the object ID of the raster catalog item containing the raster.

 

WSDL syntax

 

http://<Web Server Hostname>/<ArcGIS Instance>/services/<ServiceName>/ImageServer?wsdl
 

Methods
 

Proxy method

Description

Download

Gets a list of downloadable files of the original images and returns an array of ImageServerDownloadResult value objects for a given set of catalog item IDs and clipping geometry.

 

Execute

Executes an image service request.

 

ExportImage

Exports an image in a well-known format  (PNG, JPEG, etc) for a given image description.

 

ExportScaledImage

Exports an image in a supported format (JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF), scales it into a square pixel size, and returns both the image data and the adjusted image extent for a given image description.

GenerateServiceInfo

Generates the new image service info as if a given rendering rule is applied to the target image service.

 

GetCatalogItemCount

Gets the number of catalog items for a given query filter.

 

GetCatalogItemIDs

Gets a list of catalog item object IDs of catalog items for a given query filter.

 

GetCatalogItems

Gets a set of catalog items for a given query filter.

 

GetFields

Gets the accessible fields of an image service. The accessible fields are defined during publishing and stored in the image service configuration file.

 

GetFile

Gets the public URL to a given downloadable file.

 

GetImage

Gets an image in ESRI binary format for a given image description.

 

GetMetadata

Gets the metadata of an image service in an ESRI style XML string.

 

GetNativePixelBlock

Gets a pixel block from a given catalog item (RID), a given source image (IID), at a given block/tile location. The block location is defined by the tiling scheme from the raster information.

GetNativeRasterInfo

Gets raster info for all source raster for a given catalog item. Raster info includes tiling scheme, orientation, number of columns and rows, etc., of a raster of a given catalog item.

GetPixelBlock

Gets the pixel block at a given block/tile location from a given catalog item. The block location is defined by the tiling scheme from the raster information.

GetRasterInfo

Gets the raster information, including tiling scheme, orientation, number of columns and rows, etc., of a given catalog item.

 

GetRasterMetadata

Gets the metadata of a raster for a given catalog item in an ESRI style XML string.

 

GetServiceInfo

Gets the information on an image service including extent, spatial reference, minimum pixel size, maximum pixel size, etc.

 

GetThumbnail

Gets the thumbnail image of the raster for a given catalog item.

 

GetVersion

Gets the image service version number.

 

Identify

Identifies the content of an image service for a given location and a given mosaic rule. The location can be a point or a polygon. It returns an ImageServerIdentifyResult containing the pixel value of the mosaic at the specified location/mosaic rule/pixel size, and a set of catalog items that overlap the given geometry, as well as pixel values of each catalog item, and their visibilities.