Manage Geospatial Resources Enterprise-wide Extension improves efficiency and security Organizations can publish the location of and metadata for geospatial resources and users can discover and access these resources more efficiently using the ArcGIS Server Geoportal extension (formerly GIS Portal Toolkit). Geospatial metadata typically documents how, when, where, and by whom the data was collected; information on its availability and distribution; its projection, scale, resolution, and accuracy; and its reliability compared to established standards. The ArcGIS Server Geoportal extension does not create or duplicate geospatial resources; it collects and publishes metadata in a central catalog that allows users to search and access the associated resources. By enabling the sharing of geospatial resources regardless of GIS platform, it gives organizations an enterprise-level awareness of disparate geospatial resources and activities. This extension meets the needs of the four groups who use geospatial portals: portal developers, portal administrators, resource publishers, and resource users. Portal developers need simple tools to quickly and easily create and customize GIS portals. Portal administrators, who maintain the integrity of GIS portals, need tools for evaluating new entries before publication, backing up and recovering portals, implementing security, and integrating the GIS portal with other IT systems. Resource publishers need tools for sharing the resources they have authored. Resource users want tools The Esri portal for the Group on Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS) provides scientists with easy access to a wealth of earth observation data and Web mapping services. When new resources become available, users can be alerted by subscribing to a GeoRSS news feed. The Esri GEOSS GEOPortal was built using ArcGIS Server 9.3 and the ArcGIS Server Geoportal extension. for previewing and accessing datasets easily. The Geoportal extension includes an outof-the-box portal application that helps portal developers get a GIS portal up and running quickly. With a fully functional metadata catalog, this application helps users search, ArcGIS Server 9.3 Leverages OGC Specifications Standards support enhances client integration ArcGIS Server 9.3 adds increased support for Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Transactional Web Feature Service (WFS-T), two Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), specifications, which improves integration with virtually any client application that supports these commonly accepted GIS and IT standards. Support for enhanced Web Map Service (WMS) allows the use of Styled Layer Descriptors (SLD) that define how layers draw. WCS is a data service that enables multispectral pixel values from a raster dataset to be returned to Web applications. ArcGIS's WCS implementation supports returning data in many formats—GeoTIFF, NITF, HDF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, and PNG. Applications that can connect to WCS services (including ArcGIS and geoprocessing tools) can perform analysis on the pixel values. ArcGIS Server can publish any raster dataset as OGC WMS, WCS, or KML. Any GIS client that supports WFS-T can carry out transactions against geodatabases using an ArcGIS Server-published WFS-T service. Publishers can also create Web applications that leverage the WFS-T specification by allowing multiple browser-based clients editing access 8 ArcUser Summer 2009 to Esri geodatabases. The ArcGIS Server implementation of the OGC WMS standard supports the use of SLD and allows a publisher to advertise multiple userselectable styles for generating the map. SLD implementation allows greater client-side control of symbology. Both SLD and the WFS implementation of ArcGIS Server can leverage the OGC Filter Encoding (FE) specification. ArcGIS Server's implementation of FE allows SLD-based WMS workflows to apply spatial and attribute filter logic to selectively style specific features. In the context of the ArcGIS WFS implementation, FE-based spatial and attribute filters can be used in the queries to request a subset of features from the data store. In the last decade, Esri has redesigned the architecture of its GIS products in response to emerging IT and GIS trends that promote interoperability. This new architecture enhances GIS data management and information interchange and supports emerging Web services, GIS portals, and spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). For more information, take Leveraging OGC Capabilities in ArcGIS Server 9.3, a free Web training seminar, or visit www.esri.com/standards. www.esri.com