Introduction to the overall GIS framework

ArcGIS Server is a comprehensive platform for publishing enterprise-level GIS applications. It provides a framework for creating and configuring GIS applications and services to meet various client needs, this is an abstract description of ArcGIS Server. What role does ArcGIS Server play in GIS applications?

People who have used ArcGIS desktop applications know that there are various GIS tools available in the desktop environment. For example, ArcMap and arcglobe can be used to display GIS data, and address locator can be used based on location addressing, you can use the geoprocessing tool of arctoolbox to analyze data. These include different levels of GIS functions. At the underlying level, ArcObjects is used to implement these functions.

From the perspective of ArcGIS Server, we no longer consider whether the data to be processed is the mxd document of ArcMAP, The 3DD document of arcglobe, or the Address locators, we use the concept of services to describe them. These services can be map services, globe services, geocode services, and GIS resources rely on these services, when you need to share a map on the GIS server, you can use the mxd of the map to define a map service. It can be seen that the purpose of ArcGIS Server is to host various services and provide these service resources for client applications. In addition, ArcGIS Server provides a management program to control and manage services.

The ArcGIS Server architecture can be used to describe:

GIS server

Host various GIS resources, such as maps, globes, and Address locators, and encapsulate them as services for client applications.

The GIS server consists of server ojbect Manager (SOM) and Server Object containers (SOCs ). It can be seen from the naming that one SOM and one or more SOC are used. The client sends a request to the som, and the SOM provides the allocated resources to the client and schedules and manages the SOC through the som.

Web Server

The Web server includes the deployment of web applications and web services, all of which use service resources on the GIS server.

Clients

The clients mentioned here are diverse. They can be web clients, mobile devices, Internet services connected to ArcGIS Server over HTTP, or ArcGIS desktop applications connected to ArcGIS Server local services over LAN/WAN.

Data Server

It contains the GIS resources of the published services on the GIS server, which can be mxd documents, Geodatabase, toolbox, etc.

Manager and arccatalog Administrators

Both of them can be used to publish and manage GIS resources as services. The difference is that one is to manage on the web page, and the other is on the desktop catalog. As shown in the figure, they are targeted at different levels.

ArcGIS Desktop content authors

Various GIS resources need to be customized using various ArcGIS desktop software. If you need to generate a cache for the map service, you can use arccatalog to create a cache.

ArcGIS Server is a comprehensive platform for publishing enterprise-level GIS applications. If you want to learn more about ArcGIS Server basics, You can first look at ArcGIS Server architecture, ESRI (China) BBS forum and ESRI website. Here and the next series of articles will mainly introduce the development-related content of ArcGIS Server (for example, if not described, the server specifically refers to ArcGIS Server later, make full use of the server resources to build our enterprise-level applications. At the same time, you can understand the advantages and disadvantages of the server, and foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses in practical applications.

Before developing the server, we need to understand the overall architecture of server development. As you can see, the server provides a series of application development approaches, which increase the difficulty from 1 to 4. Of course, the functions and customization are getting stronger and stronger, we can make full use of these resources provided by the server to build our applications.

Web Application Development

Server provides a series of development methods for Web application development. In Visual Studio 2005, you can directly use web mapping application template to create an application, which includes the Web ADF framework, is the portal to learn about server development. As mentioned above, we can understand that if you want to use a variety of Web controls and add a small amount of code to build a web application, you can directly use the first method. Such an application is relatively rigid, it makes people feel a little want to build blocks. programmers may not have any sense of accomplishment. The advantage is rapid development, suitable for getting started or making a simple server demonstration. If you want to use a variety of common functionality based on the common API and customize the Web ADF through various data source types, you can use the second development path. If you want to use the common API and you need to call the specific API through the common API to customize the Web ADF, you can develop it through the third method.

Web Service Development

ArcGIS provides two types of Web Service creation methods: GIS web service and application web service.

GIS Web Service provides an ESRI standard that releases ArcGIS Server Object (local data source) as ArcGIS Server Web Service (Internet Data Source). GIS Web Service is not used for development, generally, they are used to publish information and provide resources. ArcMap can directly use GIS Web service resources without any development, in addition, the web ADF control and common API can also use GIS Web service resources. Because GIS Web Service is based on standard Web Service and can be used as a traditional Web Service, ArcGIS Server provides soap APIs for relevant development and will be used in future studies.

Application Web Service is an application created based on a standard web service. It is developed using an ESRI data source. Because Web services do not have user interfaces, Channel 1 is not suitable for such applications, and channel 4 is the most suitable, because Web services can fully utilize all the functionality of the various data source specific APIs provided by ESRI.

Desktop client application development

ESRI provides two methods to implement GIS functions and services in Desktop client applications: ArcGIS Engine and Data Source Specific developer APIs. Only the fourth method can be used in Desktop client applications.

Arcengine has rich controls and many APIs for interacting with local GIS resources or using remote data resources. However, arcengine must be authorized for registration before use and distribution, any data source specific developer APIs can be programmed and used in Desktop client applications.

Mobile Application Development

Mobile applications are similar to web applications and web services, but they are designed for a specific client environment, such as pocketpc. Mobile ADF is a development framework customized for mobile applications. It is usually developed in four ways, so that the functions provided by ArcGIS Server Web Services and soap APIs can be fully utilized.

In the future development process, we will gradually learn about the above development methods and continue to deepen them.

The full name of the Web ADF is web application develope framework, which is a development framework dedicated to ArcGIS Server. ArcIMS of version 9.2 also began to provide the encapsulation of the ADF.