Geometry services

The geometry service helps applications do geometric calculations such as buffering, simplifying, calculating areas and lengths, and projecting. The geometry service provides an alternative to doing these calculations using fine-grained ArcObjects or a geoprocessing service. The geometry service is especially appropriate for applications built with the ArcGIS REST or JavaScript APIs.

The geometry service works behind the scenes and is only visible to server administrators and developers. Those who make user connections to the server do not see the geometry service. However, they may be affected by the increased functionality that the geometry service provides in the server applications.

The geometry service is new at ArcGIS Server 9.3 and is not enabled by default. You must create it in order for your applications to use it.

Creating the geometry service

To create the geometry service, choose the Add New Service option in either Manager or ArcCatalog. For service type, choose Geometry Service. When creating the geometry service, remember these important points:

• The geometry service must be named Geometry.
• You can only have one geometry service per server; however, you can configure multiple instances of the service to run at the same time. You do this through the Maximum number of instances property.
• Geometry services are always pooled.
• You can stop, start, and delete a geometry service, just like you would any other service.

Developing with the geometry service

When building a JavaScript application, you can reference the geometry service through its REST endpoint. See the ArcGIS JavaScript API helps for information about how to use the geometry service in the applications that you build. Navigate to any of the examples that do buffering to see how the geometry service is used.

If you are building a Web ADF application and you want to use the geometry service, it's recommended that you use SOAP. You can find information on the geometry service in the SOAP SDK, available at the ArcGIS Server Resource Center.