ArcGIS 10 Server What to Expect

Well today was the first day proper to the Developer Summit, great Plenary Session check out #devsummit on Twitter to follow the web of comments. So what can you expect from ArcGIS Server 10? Well its going to be more powerful, faster and easier to maintain. These are some of the highlights;

1. ArcGIS Server 10 will provide greatly improved web edit capability. ArcGIS Server has had web edit capability for a while via WebADF but the new capabilities are truly transformational. So here’s the deal – in ArcMAP you Author your Map, you build a template that defines for each Feature Class that you want to be editable its edit characteristics. These include it’s  symbology, construction tool, split/merge rules, mandatory fields, default fields etc. When you publish the Map you can optionally expose a Feature Service the Feature service supports edit and is available via the REST endpoint to the JavaScript, FLEX or Silverlight API’s. Any client you build using these API’s can now provide edit capability simply by selecting on any one from  a palette of editable Feature Classes and drawing on the Map. Its that simple. Edits are then persisted in the Geodatabase that was the source for the Feature Class. The API’s include functionality to draw, split/merge, delete, move and modify shapes and/or vertices. It’s hard to describe, but the beauty of this is in its simplicity. It will make it possible to do all sorts of things that have been difficult before. What I’m most excited about is the potential it offers for Volunteered Geographic Information or VGI where Citizens input data directly to the Geodatabase (or a Version of it at least) as Jack put it – it makes every “Citizen a Sensor”. Equally it can easily enable edit workflows within an organisation or across an extranet or from the field.
2. The Geodatabase Model and the corresponding API data type support have been extended. The REST API’s now support standalone tables, either with or without relationship classes to the spatial data. This means that you can select a feature for Query or Edit and also access its related tables for Query/Edit. The Geodatabase now supports Attachments which makes it easy to submit documents, pictures etc across the web associated with spatial features or locations. Think of going out with your iPhone, spotting a pothole, graffiti, broken street light etc, taking a picture and submitting it directly to the relevant authority for rectification. The possibilities are endless.
3. The Optimised Map Services introduced at 9.3.1 will at ArcGIS Server 10 now support Cartographic Representations, Maplex Labelling and improved sharper True Type Fonts to make your web maps even more beautiful.
4. Cache management will be improved. ArcGIS 10 now supports a compact cache format which will greatly facilitate cache management by reducing the number of files in a cache. This is accompanied by new Cache Import & Export facilities which mean multiple organisations can collaborate on building large caches. The handling of imagery with whitespace has now been made possible by a new combination PNGJPEG image option which uses JPEG on the interior of images but PNG, to support transparency, on the image periphery where it detects background values.
5. Time based Map Animations are supported. The ArcGIS Server  reads the Time parameters established on a Feature Class in the ArcMAP Document and make them available to the REST endpoint where they can be consumed by new time slider controls. This offers really powerful visualisation capability of time based themes.
6. ArcGIS Server 10 supports Query Layers just like ArcGIS Desktop. So you can publish spatial data from your Oracle or SQL Server database directly via your Map to ArcGIS Server without ArcSDE support.
7. ArcGIS Server 10 supports the new Mosaic Dataset just like ArcGIS Desktop. This means you can access a massive library of  raster tiles in their native format and render them in your web map with high performance dynamic services. A Mosaic Dataset is like a cross between a Raster Catalog and a Mosaic but with the performance of a map cache. No administration overhead, all files managed on disk.
8. ArcGIS Server 10 supports a number of new Geo-processing functions. These include a really impressive Data Extraction Geoprocess which makes it possible to select, and download any data from a Map service in a format of your choice.
9. ArcGIS Server 10 supports direct integration with the ArcGIS.com.  What does this mean? Well you can publish a Map and then add that Map to the Community Content or the My Content sections or to a specific Group on  ArcGIS.com and anyone with appropriate access rights can discover and visualise  that map in ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Explorer Online or the new iPhone Application. Then they can add thier own layers and republish thier Map for discovery, visualisation and sharing.
10. ArcGIS Server 10 is now available on Amazon Web Services. Initially to those of your with an Enterprise Licence Agreement but later this year to anyobody on a pay per use model. You can stand up an ArcGIS Server, publish your Geodatabase via a Map Service, wire up the new ArcGIS Server FLEX Application and go to market in about 10 minutes.

In summary, I dont think the fundementals of ArcGIS Server have changed all that much. What we are seeing is the ever increasing exposure of its powerful capabilities via the REST based API’s. This encourages the use of these capabilities in a way that WebADF with ArcObjects never could. In fact WebADF is now being talked of as static, with quality improvements only. The action is moving to the Web2.0 environment and to the Cloud. We can now really bring GIS to the public on a global scale. Where this will take us nobody knows, but its going to be an interesting journey.