The central example in Agile Development with ICONIX Process is an ASP.NET-based hotel finder application, using ArcGIS Server [esri.com] to generate maps of cities to show the locations of hotels. The hotels are filterable using various criteria (e.g. amenities). This page is taken from a sidebar in Chapter 5 of the book, providing a quick overview of ArcGIS Server.

What is ArcGIS?

The core technology being used by the mapplet is a map server product called ArcGIS Server, from ESRI. ArcGIS is a platform for building enterprise GIS applications.

At its core, a Geographic Information System (GIS) is a system for the management, analysis, and display of geographic information. Geographic information is represented by a series of geographic datasets that model geographic information using generic data structures. A GIS includes a set of comprehensive tools for maintaining geographic data, visualizing geographic data, and analyzing relationships between geographic features on the earth’s surface. Various map views of the underlying geographic information can be constructed and used as windows into the database to support queries, analysis, and editing of the information.

Figure 1. ArcObjects software components

ArcGIS is used by thousands of different organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals to access and manage a massive variety of geographic information. There are a number of books available that cover the ArcGIS suite of products, most notably Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop, Mastering ArcGIS, and Getting to Know ArcObjects. Also, a particularly nice book on GIS science in general (not specifically about ArcGIS) is Geographic Information Systems and Science.

ArcGIS solves a particularly difficult challenge: representing in digital form a model of geographic information such as the earth’s surface; breaking these aspects down into a database of specific searchable features, such as cities, landmarks, or (in our case) hotels; and mapping addresses and zip codes to geospatial coordinates (and vice versa).

ArcGIS Server is the enterprise server of the ArcGIS platform, which includes a shared library of GIS software objects to build serverside GIS applications in an enterprise and web computing framework. ArcGIS Server provides the ability to publish GIS web services. It’s a platform for building enterprise GIS applications that are centrally managed, support multiple users, and include advanced GIS functionality.

ArcGIS Server manages geographic resources, such as maps, locators, and GIS software objects, for use by applications.

Developers can use ArcGIS Server to build focused web applications, web services, and other enterprise applications, including those based on J2EE or .NET. Developers can use ArcGIS Server to build desktop applications that interact with the server in client/server mode. ArcGIS Server also supports out-of-the-box use by ArcGIS desktop applications for server administration, simple mapping, and geocoding over a local area network (LAN) or the Internet.

ArcGIS Server, like the entire ArcGIS system, is built and extended using software components called ArcObjects, as shown in Figure 1.

The ArcGIS Server ArcObjects are the same ArcObjects that are at the core of all the ArcGIS products: ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Engine, and ArcGIS Server.

Figure 2. ArcGIS Server-based web application

ArcGIS Server consists of two primary components: a GIS server and an Application Development Framework (ADF) for .NET and Java. The GIS server hosts ArcObjects for use by web, enterprise, and desktop applications. It includes the core ArcObjects libraries and provides a scalable environment for running ArcObjects on a server. ADF allows you to build and deploy .NET or Java desktop and web applications that use ArcObjects running within the GIS server.

ADF includes a software developer kit (SDK) with software objects, web controls, web application templates, developer help, and code samples. It also includes a web application runtime, which allows you to deploy web applications without having to install ArcObjects on your web server.

Figure 2 (above) shows an example screenshot of an ArcGIS Server-based web application.

The result of the book's example ArcGIS Server "mapplet" project is a fully functional map-based hotel finder application which you can try out at http://smartmaps.vresorts.com - so you can easily compare the requirements and design of the example project with the finished application.

>> More information about ArcGIS Server [ESRI.com]

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