Choosing application settings

This topic describes how to choose an account for local connections to ArcGIS Server, and explains caching layer information in application state. Both these settings are available in the Application Settings tab or wizard panel in Manager.

Choosing an account for local connections

If one of the layers in your Web application uses a local connection to ArcGIS Server, you will see a panel asking which account you want to use for the connection.

The account you choose must

• Be a member of the agsusers group on all servers your application will access through a local connection
• Have write access to the Temporary ASP.NET files directory.

How is the default user chosen?

You may see that the value is already filled in. By default, the account is set to the first user who created a Web application using Manager. If you're creating a new Web application and you don't want it to connect as the default user, you can click Change to choose a different user. This user will then become the default.

If you change the user while editing an existing application, the default will not be changed.

Changing passwords

If possible, it's a good idea to choose an account whose password rarely or never changes. However, some organizations' security standards require that all passwords be changed on a regular basis.

If you change an account's password, the Web applications that make local connections with that account do not get updated automatically. You must edit the applications individually in Manager using the Local Servers tab to change the password used by the application.

Choosing whether to cache layer information in application state

The Application Settings tab also contains an option to cache layer information in application state. This improves application memory usage and startup time by storing certain information about layers in the application in a cache on the server. Layer information is retrieved from the service the first time the application is accessed. Subsequent sessions obtain the information more quickly from the cache.

Application state caching only occurs for layers you access through ArcGIS Server Internet (web service) connections.

By default, the cache is refreshed every 24 hours. You can change this value in Visual Studio by editing the CacheTimeOut property on the MapResourceManager control.

If you restart the map services used by your application because your map document changed, you should manually refresh the cache. You also need to refresh the cache if your application accesses an external service whose layer information changed.

To refresh the cache, use the Applications tab in Manager to open the list of existing Web applications. Right-click your application name and click Restart.