An overview of the Caching toolset

The Caching toolset creates and manages caches for faster display of map and globe services. The caches consist of pregenerated images that the server can distribute to clients. Tools with "Map Server" in the name work with map services; tools with "Globe Server" in the name work with globe services.

Creating a cache requires the server to generate many map images and save them to disk. Depending on the area and scales covered, the caches can become very large, taking many gigabytes of space. Some of the tools can take a long time to run, and you should read the Caching services book of the help for guidelines on how to plan your cache and anticipate the creation time.

Many of the tools in this toolset are especially appropriate for scripting. For example, Manage Map Server Cache Tiles can be run on a regular basis to update the tiles in a cache with the latest available data. See Automating cache creation and updates with geoprocessing to learn more.

Tool	Description
Convert Map Server Cache Storage Format	Converts the storage of a map service cache between the exploded (pre-10.0) format and the compact format. The tool converts the format "in place", meaning it does not make a copy of the existing format. Instead, it creates the new format cache in the same cache folder and deletes the old format.
Create Map Server Cache	Creates the tiling scheme and preparatory folders for a map service cache. After running this tool, run Manage Map Server Cache Tiles to add tiles to the cache.
Delete Globe Server Cache	Deletes an existing globe service cache and all tiles in it.
Delete Map Server Cache	Deletes an existing map service cache, including all associated files on disk.
Export Map Server Cache	Exports tiles from a map cache to a folder on disk. The tiles can either be imported into other caches or they can be accessed from ArcGIS Desktop as a raster dataset, independent from their parent service.
Generate Map Server Cache Tiling Scheme	Generates an XML tiling scheme file that defines the scale levels, tile dimensions, and other properties for a map service cache. This tool is useful when creating a tiling scheme to use in multiple caches. You can load the tiling scheme file when you create a cache in ArcCatalog or Manager, or you can run Create Map Server Cache and pass in the tiling scheme file as a parameter.
Import Map Server Cache	Imports tiles from a folder on disk into a map cache. The source folder can be a child of a registered server cache directory or it can be some other folder into which tiles have been previously exported. The target map service must have the same tiling scheme and the storage format as the source map cache.
Manage Globe Server Cache Tiles	Creates and updates tiles in an existing globe service cache. This tool is used to create new tiles or to replace missing tiles, overwrite outdated tiles, or add new tiles. All these actions can be defined by rectangular extents or by a polygon feature class. When creating new tiles, you can choose whether to create only empty tiles or re-create all tiles.
Manage Map Server Cache Scales	Updates the scale levels in an existing cached map service. Use this tool to add new scales or delete existing scales from a map cache.
Manage Map Server Cache Tiles	Creates and updates tiles in an existing map service cache. This tool is used to create new tiles, replace missing tiles, overwrite outdated tiles, and delete tiles.