Data source used by script is not registered with the server and will be copied

Description

Attempts to share a script as a web tool with the arcgis.gis module in a geoprocessing service in ArcGIS Pro return the following warning:

Warning:
Data source used by script is not registered with the server and will be copied

The warning message is returned when analyzing the service before publishing.

A geoprocessing service using the arcgis.gis module executes the same request to ArcGIS REST API. However, using a geoprocessing service creates additional overhead as a result of hosting the service and system resource usage.

Example of an arcgis.gis module (script):

kml_content = gis.content.search("*", item_type="KML")

Example of an ArcGIS REST API request:

Request Type: POST https://hostname.domain.com/portal/sharing/rest/search HTTP/1.1
Format: json
Query: q * AND  (type:"kml") accountid:0123456789ABCDEF

Cause

When analyzing a geoprocessing service, the script is scanned to discover any project data. Every quoted string used in a Python variable or as an argument to a function is tested to identify if it is a path to existing data.

If a geoprocessing service contains a script using a function from the arcgis.gis module, string variables can be interpreted as a file path instead of a URL. As the string variable is not a valid file path, the analyzer returns the warning message. The warning prevents the publishing of the geoprocessing service because a 00068 error is also returned. The URL is considered a broken data source and this renders the system unable to copy the source to the server.

The following script demonstrates a connection to the portal. When the analyzer scans the script, it interprets the portal URL as a file path.

gis = GIS("https://hostname.domain.com/portal","portaladmin","portaladmin1")

Solution or Workaround

To publish a geoprocessing service using Python, it is necessary for the analyzer not to interpret string parameters as a data source. This can be prevented by replacing the "//" or "/" string with a different symbol, for example, "??" or "?", and using the replace() method to return the proper URL. The following code demonstrates how this is performed:

portalURL = "https??hostname.domian.com?portal"
portalURL = portalURL.replace('??', '://')
portalURL = portalURL.replace('?', '/')
gis = GIS(portalURL)