ArcGIS

ArcGIS (Arc gee-eye-ESS) is the name of a group of geographic information system software product lines produced by ESRI. At the desktop GIS level, ArcGIS can include: ArcReader, which allows one to view and query maps created with the other Arc products; ArcView, which allows one to view spatial data, create maps, and perform basic spatial analysis; ArcEditor which includes all the functionality of ArcView, includes more advanced tools for manipulation of shapefiles and geodatabases; or ArcInfo the most advanced version of ArcGIS, which includes added capabilities for data manipulation, editing, and analysis. There are also server-based ArcGIS products, as well as ArcGIS products for PDAs. Extensions can be purchased separately to increase the functionality of ArcGIS.

Product info and history

File:ArcMap.jpg

The ArcMap module of ArcGIS showing data for the Chesapeake Bay

Prior to the ArcGIS suite, ESRI had focused its software development on the command line Arc/INFO workstation program and several GUI-based products such as the ArcView GIS 3.x desktop program.

In 2000, ESRI focused on the Microsoft Windows operating system environment and combined the visualization power of an updated ArcView GIS 3.x interface with some of the power from the Arc/INFO version 7.2 workstation. This pairing resulted in a new software suite called ArcGIS version 8.0, which included the command-line ArcInfo workstation (v8.0) and a new interface called ArcMap (v8.0), as well as a data management environment called ArcCatalog (v8.0).

The release of the ArcGIS suite constituted a major change in ESRI's software offerings, aligning all their client and server products under one software architecture known as ArcGIS, developed using Microsoft Windows COM standards, and designed to store data in a new proprietary RDBMS-hosted format: what ESRI termed a geodatabase.

One major difference is the programming (scripting) languages available to customize or extend the software to suit particular user needs. In the transition to ArcGIS, ESRI dropped support of its application-specific scripting languages, Avenue and the ARC Macro Language (AML), in favor of Visual Basic for Applications scripting and open access to ArcGIS components using the Microsoft COM standards.

The current version of the ArcGIS software is 9.2. While there are alternative products available from other traditional vendors such as MapInfo and Intergraph, ESRI has a dominant share of the GIS software market with its software used by 77% of GIS professionals .

The ArcGIS 9 release includes a geoprocessing environment that allows execution of traditional GIS processing tools (such as clipping, overlay, and spatial analysis) interactively or from any scripting language that supports COM standards. Although the most popular of these is Python, others have been used, especially perl and VBScript.

ArcGIS 9 also includes a visual programming environment called ModelBuilder that allows users to graphically link geoprocessing tools into new tools called models. These models can be executed directly or exported to scripting languages which can then execute in batch mode (launched from a command line), or they can undergo further editing to add branching or looping.

ESRI's change to the ArcGIS platform has rendered an extensive range of user-developed and third-party add-on software and scripts that worked with the older ESRI software architectures incompatible with ArcGIS.

Because of the changes in scripting capability, functionality, operating system choices (the ArcGIS Desktop software is developed exclusively for the Microsoft Windows operating system), and the significantly larger system resources required by the ArcGIS system, a substantial user base continues to productively use the older products. ESRI has continued support for these users.

ArcView 3.x is still available for purchase, and ArcInfo Workstation is still included in a full ArcGIS ArcInfo license to provide some editing and file conversion functionality that has not been included to date in ArcGIS.

• ArcGIS ArcReader is free. [1]
• ArcGIS ArcView costs $1500 USD. [2]
• One of the popular ArcGIS extensions, Spatial Analyst, costs $2500 USD [3]
• ArcView GIS 3.3 costs $1195 USD. [4]
• ArcInfo is not available a la carte and must be purchased by contract from ESRI. [5]

File:ArcCatalog.jpg

The ArcCatalog module, center panel is the ArcToolBox, right panel is showing metadata.

References

• ESRI (2004) What is ArcGIS? - White paper. [6] - (PDF download, 124 pages, 16 mb)

See also

• ArcView Covering the older and newer versions
• CommunityViz An ArcGIS extension for land-use planning
• PurVIEW The Wikipedia entry for a commercial product to expand ArcGIS

External links

• ArcGIS official website - ESRI
• PurVIEW homepage
• ESRI ArcGIS 9 Extension TypeConvert ESRI ArcGIS 9 Extension to create intricate Google Earth KML files from ArcGIS feature classes