What is arcserver?
Working for an organization that manages geographic information, you're faced with the challenge of sharing your collection of geographic information to people within your organization and to those outside as well. ArcGIS Server provides the platform for sharing your GIS resources, such as maps, with your user community, whether they're sitting in the same office using ArcGIS Desktop or sitting across the country accessing and viewing maps from across the Internet.
ArcGIS Server allows you to share your GIS resources across an enterprise and across the Web. GIS resources are the maps, globes, address locators, and geodatabases that you want to share with others. You share these resources by first hosting them on your ArcGIS Server system, or GIS server, and then allowing client applications to use and interact with the resources. The main advantages of sharing your GIS resources on a GIS server are the same as sharing any data through any kind of server technology for instance, the data is centrally managed, supports multiple users, and provides clients with the most up-to-date information.
You might ask, why do I need a GIS server for this, wouldn't any server technology work? Well, in addition to providing access to particular GIS resources, the GIS server also provides access to the GIS functionality that the resource contains. For example, you might be able to share a map with someone through a server, but it would be even better if that person could also interact with the map, like find the closest hospital, restaurant, or bank and then get directions to it from their location. Thus, the GIS server not only allows you to share resources, like maps, but also allows you to access the embedded GIS functionality in them.
How people use the GIS resources on the server depends on who they are. Some people will be fully aware of GIS servers and also of the particular resources on a given server because they need to use them directly. For example, a GIS analyst might author a map that contains a layer that references a map resource on a GIS server. Or a developer may build a Web application that uses a map and an address locator to schedule and route delivery trucks.
For other people, the details about GIS servers and GIS resources will be completely hidden from them. For example, the members of a city council may explore a map through a Web application, for instance, finding locations suitable for redevelopment, before they make a decision that affects the community they live in. For them, the Web application simply provides the tools and information to help them make their decision. The fact that the Web application they're using to explore the map is accessing a particular map resource hosted on a GIS server is of no concern.
Let's take a look at some examples of how people use the GIS resources on a GIS server.
It is now commonplace to see maps or other geographic information integrated seamlessly into Websites. ArcGIS Server helps you put your geographic information on the Web, whether you need an application that simply displays a map or a more sophisticated one that incorporates specialized GIS tools. Access to the GIS server is embedded inside the Web application and typically hidden from the user of the application.
When you create web applications with ArcGIS Server, you can integrate content from your own server with content from other GIS servers. For example, suppose you’re a retailer with data about how products are selling across your store locations. You might overlay your data with demographic data from a different source to see how sales at each store location compare to the population around them. This way, you can tailor the products at the stores to the community they serve.
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to access the GIS resources you host on your GIS server is through ArcGIS Explorer. Included with ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Explorer is a geospatial information viewer that provides an easy way to view the geographic information running on a GIS server.
With ArcGIS Explorer, you can:
Use ArcGIS Explorer to view GIS resources running on your GIS server.
The ArcGIS Desktop suite of applications (e.g., ArcCatalog, ArcMap, and ArcGlobe) provides access to the GIS resources on the GIS server. ArcGIS Desktop users can be divided into two groups: those that simply use the GIS resources hosted on the GIS server and those that are actively involved with creating and managing the GIS resources. Thus, ArcGIS Desktop applications can serve as clients and they are also the tools you'll use to create the resources that you host on your GIS server. For instance, you'll build maps in ArcMap and build globes in ArcGlobe, then use ArcCatalog to put them on your GIS server.
Here's a brief overview of how you can use the desktop applications with the GIS server.
You can use ArcGIS Desktop applications to create and view resources hosted on a GIS server.
Application developers can also make use of the GIS resources to create custom applications that focus on the requirements of a particular user in their user community. Typically, the end user of a custom application that incorporates GIS functionality has little or no knowledge that this functionality is being provided by the GIS server.
The following sections describe how a developer might use GIS resources to build various kinds of applications.
Developers can build Web applications that end users access through Web browsers. Again, the developer accesses one or more GIS resources on the GIS server and incorporates its functionality into the Web application.
Unlike Web applications, Web services are not consumed by people, but by software applications. Thus, Web services don't have any user interface; it's up to the application that uses the Web service to provide the interface. Usually, the fact that an application uses a Web service is completely hidden to any user of the application. ArcGIS Server Web services are no different. They provide GIS functionality to applications that need it, with the expectation that those applications will provide the necessary user experience that exposes the functionality.
ArcGIS Server Manager lets you create Web services that access the GIS server and provide GIS functionality to other applications. You can create map, geocode, globe, geodata, geoprocessing, mobile data, network analysis, OGC Web Mapping Services (WMS), and Keyhole Markup Language (KML) Web services.
Developers can build desktop applications that work with the GIS server in a client/server mode. These applications can be built using the ArcGIS Server application developer framework (ADF) or with the ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit.
The software developer kit (SDK) included with ArcGIS Server includes the libraries, samples, diagrams, and help you need to develop applications that make use of the server.
In the Java Enterprise world, an enterprise application is a complete, deployable unit of application components, often consisting of Enterprise JavaBeans(tm) (EJBs), JSP-based Web applications or Web services that consume the EJB services , and any other application resources that run in a standards-based J2EE application server.
ArcGIS Server is a technology that enables anyone to publish web mapping services and consume them on the internet.
These published web mapping services can be accessed through Desktop GIS applications or online without having to install special software.
For instance, users can access web mapping services in ArcGIS Desktop or Pro, ArcGIS Online, and other web client applications as a map image layer or a feature layer.
The ArcGIS Server technology has been available since 2004 and it continues to be a convenient way to share map layers through the web. Let’s examine ArcGIS Server in more detail.
In the grand scheme of things, ArcGIS Server is a back-end component part of ArcGIS Enterprise. ArcGIS Server allows anyone to centrally manage, publish and serve map layers online.
Then, the browser is the client-side (front-end component) that you can use to call the web services from ArcGIS Server.
This communication between the server and client happens through HTTP requests from the client to server. This is where the REST API applies.
Each web mapping service that is published through ArcGIS Server has a REST endpoint, which is how the client can gain access to it.
Under the hood, it’s ArcGIS Server that helps you centrally manage and publish web mapping services. Web mapping services (WMS) are hosted on the internet and governed by standards set by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
They come in a variety of different formats such as WMS, WFS, WCS, WPS, WMTS, and WCPS. Each one has a specific usage for serving data online. Based on the type of web service you publish, it’s ArcGIS Server that controls whether or not you can edit the features, tile caching, and more.
If you want to learn more about the different types of web mapping services, you should try reading our article – An Introduction to Web Mapping Services (WMS). You can also find more information on the different types of GIS formats, including web standards.
If you want to publish a web mapping service for others to access, it’s possible to share the entire map contents or individual feature classes. From the main menu, you can click:
In ArcGIS Desktop File > Share As > Service > Publish Service
In ArcGIS Pro Publish Ribbon > Map Service
From here, it will take you through a wizard on finalizing the publication of your web mapping service. There are a lot of options for customization so be careful to choose the correct settings.
It’s easy to access web mapping services in a Desktop GIS application like in ArcGIS Desktop or Pro. You typically establish the server connection in the ArcCatalog pane:
In ArcCatalog: Catalog > Add ArcGIS Server > Use GIS Services
Remember that once you publish a service online, it’s through the client that you access the map layer. By using the URL of the REST endpoint, it’s how you can call any published service.
Services can be published to ArcGIS Enterprise in three ways:
When you share an item, such as a web map, mosaic dataset, or geoprocessing tool, from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Enterprise, a wizard walks you through the process. The program alerts you to potential performance issues in the resource you are publishing. It also searches its list of registered data locations to find paths that need to be fixed after your resource is moved to the server.
Learn about the types of services you can publish to ArcGIS Enterprise
If you’ve worked with ArcGIS for Desktop, then you know how to use applications like ArcMap and ArcGlobe to view and analyze GIS data. You use these same applications when publishing web services to ArcGIS for Server. You can author maps, geoprocessing models, mosaic datasets, and other GIS resources in ArcGIS for Desktop and use a simple wizard to share them as web services.
As part of the sharing process, ArcGIS alerts you to potential performance issues in the resource you are publishing. It also checks its list of registered data locations to understand whether it needs to fix any paths after your resource is moved to the server.
Below are the types of resources you can publish to ArcGIS for Server:
If you don’t want to publish right away (for example, if you don’t have immediate access to the server machine) you can save a service definition file instead and publish it later. The service definition includes all the data paths and properties necessary to publish the service at another time. You can even choose to include all the source data, allowing you to truly package the service into one transferrable file.
During the publishing process, you'll enable capabilities that define the various ways your audience can use the service. For example, Feature Access is a popular capability that allows web users to edit vector features in a map service. Another example of a capability is WMS, which exposes your service through the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) specifications.
See What types of services can you publish for greater detail on the services and capabilities available to you.
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