These APIs will dramatically simplify your development experience and enable you to deliver fast and user-friendly mashup GIS Web applications.
The JavaScript libraries will also let you embed ArcGIS Server maps, geocoding, and geoprocessing services into Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth.
Additional support for OGC standards including Web Coverage Service (WCS), Transactional Web Feature Service (WFS-T), and Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) support for WMS provides you with open and more flexible solutions.
KML 2.2 support has also been greatly enhanced and will improve your ability to integrate with virtually all the commonly accepted GIS and IT standards.
Major additions have been made to the online help and SDK documentation.
A new ArcGIS Server Resource Center brings together the set of online resources to help make you successful including blogs, samples, and best practices information.
Also, take a look at the many enhancements to the geodatabase and ArcGIS Mobile coming with the ArcGIS 9.3 release.
ArcGIS 9.3 is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2008.
The ArcGIS 9.3 beta program is only open to ESRI Developer Network (EDN) subscribers. An e-mail invitation was sent to the primary maintenance contact at each organization that subscribes to EDN.
If you are interested in becoming an EDN subscriber, please visit www.esri.com/edn.
ArcGIS Desktop is fully supported on 64-bit Windows at 9.2 Service Pack 3 and beyond. While ArcGIS is a 32-bit application, it has been tested and certified on the 64-bit versions of Windows. We have no immediate plans to release a native 64-bit version of ArcGIS Desktop, although we will continue to research this possibility.
At ArcGIS 9.2, we released 64-bit versions of the ArcSDE component of ArcGIS Server for some UNIX platforms. At 9.3, we will also release a native 64-bit version of ArcSDE technology for Windows and Linux.
ArcGIS 9.3 will support Visual Studio 2008 in ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Engine, and ArcGIS Server for customization and development. In addition, ArcGIS 9.3 will continue to support Visual Studio 2005. ArcGIS 9.3 will still have the Visual Basic (VB) 6 Software Developer Kit (SDK) for ArcGIS Engine and ArcGIS Desktop, but it will be the last release that will support VB 6. ArcGIS Server 9.3 will support .NET 3.5.
ArcGIS 9.3 will not support Visual C++ 6.0. In fact, ArcGIS 9.1 was the last release that supported it. However, if you want to do COM Visual C++ development at ArcGIS 9.2 and 9.3, ESRI will support that language via Visual Studio 2005 (not Visual Studio 6).
This is not true. VBA will continue to be fully supported in ArcGIS 9.3, and we have no plans to retire VBA support in the near term. However, we do not recommend VBA for extensive application development or customization, and users should employ Visual Studio and ArcObjects to do more complex development.
At 9.3, ArcGIS Server support for KML has been greatly enhanced. At 9.3, when you publish a map service, the KML service option is automatically checked. At 9.2, you had to manually check the KML option.
Improvements to KML support in ArcGIS Server 9.3 include
Automatic availability of KML through REST
Use of KML Regions to display cached map services
Availability of KML for image services
Availability of KML footprints through REST
Ability to select a label field
Ability to turn labels off
Ability to select lines and polygons
Ability to view the legend for a service (This legend comes from the ArcMap Page Layout view.)
In ArcGIS Server Manager, under Applications, you can administer KML network links.
ArcGIS Server 9.3 map services can return the results of geoprocessing, geocoding, and query operations as KML. These services can be used in applications and can also be used directly by analysts typing in REST URLs. This is a good way to allow applications and users to selectively retrieve information from online geodatabases in KML format.
All map and image services expose a KML network link through REST. REST is a way of exposing information about your services through a series of navigable URLs. At 9.3, you will be able to discover the URL to the network link using what we are tentatively calling the ArcGIS Services Explorer, which is an application designed to help you navigate the REST endpoints on your server. If you're participating in the beta program, you can see examples of the Services Explorer. Essentially,
it is like a metadata report for each of your services with links showing how that map service will appear in a variety of applications including ArcGIS Explorer, Google Earth, Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and ArcGIS Desktop. The URL points to a .kmz file that you can add to Google Earth or any other client that supports KML network links.
Still have questions about what's coming in ArcGIS Server 9.3? Please ask.
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