A GIS administrator is investigating reports of slow performance in a map of complex polygons.

The slow performance at zoomed-out extents is likely caused by the rendering of complex polygon geometries in real time, which can be computationally intensive. Using cached data is the best approach to improve performance in this situation.

1. Reason for Slow Performance at Zoomed-Out Extents

Complex polygons require significant processing power to render at smaller scales due to the high number of vertices and complex geometry.

When users zoom out, the number of features being displayed increases, causing additional strain on the map service.

Attribute queries are not affected because they do not involve rendering the geometries.

2. Advantages of Using Cached Data

Cached tiles are pre-rendered images of the map at specific scales, stored on the server.

When cached data is used, the server simply retrieves and displays these images instead of dynamically rendering the features.

This drastically reduces server load and improves map performance at zoomed-out extents.

3. Why Not Other Options?

Run the Analyze Datasets Tool:

This tool checks for issues like invalid geometries, missing spatial indexes, or improper field types. While useful for general data health, it does not directly address rendering performance.

Compress the Enterprise Geodatabase:

Compression improves performance for versioned data by consolidating states and cleaning up the database. However, in this case, the feature class is not versioned, so compression would not resolve the rendering issues.

Steps to Implement Caching:

Open ArcGIS Server Manager and navigate to the map service configuration.

Enable tile caching and define the scales at which tiles should be created (include the problematic zoomed-out extents).

Generate the cache using the "Manage Map Server Cache Tiles" tool.

Test the map to ensure performance improvements.

References from Esri Documentation and Learning Resources:

Map Caching in ArcGIS Enterprise

Best Practices for Map Services

Conclusion:

The GIS administrator should recommend enablingcached data for the zoomed extentsto significantly improve map performance.