To share your data over the web, you can publish GIS resources as web services that run on stand-alone or federated ArcGIS Server sites, or publish maps to an ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise portal to create hosted web layer items. To help people in your organization or the public work with the resources these services and items represent, share them with others and include them in apps that meet the needs of your audience.
ArcGIS Server web services
The type of ArcGIS Server web service you publish depends on the functionality you require and the type of resource you need to make available over the web. The following topics describe the types of web services you can publish once you add a publisher GIS Server connection to your ArcGIS Desktop app:
- Features in an ArcMap document—Publish a map service or feature service.
- Geoprocessing tools or scripts to perform analysis—Publish a geoprocessing service.
- Imagery or raster data—Publish an image service.
- An enterprise geodatabase for replication workflows—Publish a geodata service.
- Address locators for geocoding—Publish a geocode service.
- Network datasets to use for routing—Publish a routing service.
Hosted web layers
Publish hosted web layers when you need to expose a map or dataset on the web, but you don't have your own ArcGIS Server site. You would also publish hosted web layers if you need to share maps and data with an Internet audience but your own ArcGIS Server site cannot be made public.
When you publish a hosted web layer, the data is copied from your data source. When you publish to ArcGIS Online, the data is hosted in and managed by ArcGIS Online. When you publish to an ArcGIS Enterprise portal, the data is hosted in and managed by your portal's relational data store or hosting server. Because it's a separate copy of the data, it's no longer tied to your data source.
The hosted web layer and its hosted data are closely related. When you delete a hosted web layer, the data hosted in ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise is also deleted.