CFL: Incompatible map provider versions

[MGWobrock]

Hi all

During tests of our CFL implementation we encountered the following behaviour:
A new feature seems to be incompatible with other existing features. When trying to save the CFL the following error message occurs:
"Unable to create the feature layer: the feature layer contains an invalid value for reference data version (2019.q4,2020.q2,)."

Here are some details about the crime scene:
xServer 2 Version: 2.26(.1)
Map Name: PTV Europe City Map Premium 2021.1H
Provider Information: HERE 2020.q2, HERE 2019.q4

The problem occured when combining the following segments into one CFL:
Segment #1: "SEGM00020a53c6a2v6PFAetwMNAA+2Y9yBT8Yj3IBu5mCsk="
Segment #2: "SEGM0002c0a4bd49v6PFAetxPc0A7GA2xR3zbDPOAOlWPQ=="

We are able to create 2 independent feature layers with those segments. The respective responses contain the following data:
Segment #1: "providerInformation": "HERE 2020.q2"
Segment #2: "providerInformation": "HERE 2019.q4"
When trying to combine both segments into a single layer we get the error message mentioned above.

Here are my questions:
What are the different provider information versions?
Is this case of different versions to be expected with all maps? ? If "yes" we would have to handle this scenario properly in our application.
Could you share some experience about this topic with us?

Thank you and best regards,
Gerrit

[Bernd Welter]

Here's some feedback from our developers:

(Romain)

As it is mentioned in the error message, it is currently impossible to generate a custom feature layer with segments coming from different versions.

Do you know in which countries are located these segments ?

Check of this provider version has been implemented to ensure that segments used to generate a CFL can only be used with the same map and not with another one. When CFL have been implemented, only one version was used in a map.

But now a map can be built using different provider versions.
As a workaround, if there are segments coming from different countries, it is necessary to generate several custom feature layers.
For the future and to improve this behavior, I don't know if something is planned, maybe Séb ... can give more information.

Then another party did run into the same issue and commented on the info above:

we had a chance to think through and try your recommendation. What you've written that works with a lot of coding in some circumstances might work. But we would lose a lot of flexibility because of it. Also, many cases would not be handled well.
Do you maybe have a workaround for the following case:
In some cases, if a restriction stack is not used enough times, we don't generate a "permanent" feature layer for it and only use binaryFeatureLayer. Unfortunately, only one binaryFeatureLayer can be specified in a request.

...to which Seb replied with...

Indeed, at the moment we can only provide one binary layer at a time, and unfortunately the only additional workaround I would see would be to use the blocking of roads by intersecting polylines (but this also requires some work, and works and it depends on the restriction they want to consider). Anyway, I think the best would be that we "relax" the constraint by authorizing multiple version from the same provider when generating a CFL, and returning a warning instead of an error in that case. We will check if we can include that for XS 2.28 and keep you informed asap.

[MGWobrock]

Hi Bernd,
happy new year and thank you for the feedback.

Do you know in which countries are located these segments ?

The Segment #2 is located in Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a french colony in North America. It causes issues with any segment in continental europe.

We will check if we can include that for XS 2.28 and keep you informed asap.

This would be highly appreciated, looking forward to updates on this

Creating and managing multiple feature layers is not feasible as a workaround for now. But as this issue is not likely to occur we can wait for an updated xServer version.

Best regards,
Gerrit