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Interoperability and standards support
Interoperability and standards support
Overview of interoperability |
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Release 9.3
Last modified October 13, 2010 |
Print all topics in : "Interoperability and standards support" |
The ArcGIS platform conforms to open standards and enterprise IT frameworks. This ensures that users can incorporate GIS in any application, on a variety of computing and mobile devices, and can use geographic information accessed from multiple databases and Web services. While geodatabase management is recommended, ArcGIS allows geographic data to be persisted and managed in almost any format. It also enables ArcGIS users to work with and integrate their information with other systems in a heterogeneous computing framework.
Services Oriented Architectures
One trend is the integration of GIS with other applications (both GIS and other IT systems) using Services-Oriented Architectures (SOA). SOA's can be used to integrate existing information systems to orchestrate work across those systems. This is used to implement critical business practices, work flows, and information flows within and across organizations.
For example, a utility could assemble a trouble call system that integrates its existing customer database application, its command and control system, and its fleet management system with a GIS server to locate and respond to affected customers. The information flow for an incident might start with the customer's phone number. The system could then locate the affected service, perform network tracing and analysis, identify the potential remedy and, finally, route the closest field service technician to the service location with detailed instructions on the work to be performed.
Using a SOA, ArcGIS and other systems are fused using IT and Web services interfaces for managing and exploiting information and software logic. ArcGIS can be integrated with other IT services using a standards-based Web services and messaging protocols, such as XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). These are the same technology standards that are used in mainstream business and enterprise computing frameworks.
Web GIS and GeoExplorers
Another trend is the use of 2D and 3D geo-visualization applications on the web. Examples such as Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth provide ready-to-use, multi-resolution global basemaps with high performance and ease-of-use. Many ArcGIS users want to leverage Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth in their daily work. They value the ability to use the Google Earth and Virtual Earth map services as digital basemaps onto which they can layer their operational GIS information and tasks.
ArcGIS users can leverage these frameworks as clients to their GIS information using protocols such as the Google Earth™ KML format and the open JavaScript™ and REST™ API's for programming custom web applications.
Data Interoperability in ArcGIS
GIS and geospatial data come in hundreds of file formats and from many organizations worldwide. Hence, it's important that ArcGIS support many of these formats directly using out-of-the box tools and format convertors. For example, data files based on these non-native formats will appear in ArcCatalog, allowing you to add the data to ArcMap as a layer and use the data in geoprocessing. You can read more about data support at An overview of data support in ArcGIS.
ArcGIS contains optional software that can extend this support for working with many more GIS data formats. ESRI and Safe Software, who is the world leader in geospatial data interoperability, have integrated the popular Safe Software FME product into ArcGIS as an optional extension product named the Data Interoperability Extension. This enables ArcGIS to recognize dozens of additional non-native formats and allows you to work with them directly, just as you would work with native ArcGIS formats. The Data Interoperability Extension also gives you the ability to define new custom data sources and to define data transformation procedures that help you perform advanced data transformations between a variety of GIS and tabular data structures.
ArcGIS is engineered for interoperability
ArcGIS supports the vision that GIS can be implemented in a manner that readily supports an organization's work flows and business requirements. ArcGIS provides this via a standards-based software platform that supports an abundance of geographic information types as well as comprehensive tools for data management, editing, analysis, display, and services.
In this context, ArcGIS software is used as a standards-based IT infrastructure for assembling desktop GIS, enterprise GIS, web GIS, mobile GIS, and spatial data infrastructures.
ArcGIS was designed to satisfy all of these evolving requirements for scalable, comprehensive, and standards-based computing for GIS.
| Topic | Strategy |
| Presentation
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| Leverage web mapping and visualization using ArcGIS Explorer, Google Earth, and Microsoft Virtual Earth |
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| Orchestrate via web services, web applications, and TCP/IP
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| Application logic
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| Data management
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| Applications programming | Provide industry-standard programming API's (C++, .NET, Java, etc.) for
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| Computing platforms | Support the widely adopted computing platforms employed in our user communities. This includes support for web servlet engines, DBMS's, application servers, and web portal frameworks:
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| Graphics |
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| International language support |
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| Accessibility standards |
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