ArcGIS and Interoperability

ArcGIS: Engineered for Interoperability

GIS requires interoperability.

Much has been written about the multidisciplinary nature of GIS technology with its ability to bring information from many sources and organizations together and perform crosscutting analysis. The interoperability requirements of GIS are well known and key to its successful deployment.

In the 1990s, GIS standards organizations such as the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) began addressing these critical requirements. Standards efforts within the GIS industry coincided with the expansion of the Internet and the advent of distributed computing models designed to integrate computing nodes into loosely coupled Web-based computing networks.

ESRI participated in these efforts and made significant contributions to GIS interoperability. By employing industry wide computing standards in its software, ESRI supports both GIS and IT interoperability.

In the last decade, ESRI has redesigned the architecture of its GIS products in response to emerging information technology (IT) as well as GIS activities and 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). The result of these engineering efforts, ArcGIS, is based on key interoperability and Web computing concepts and is used by tens of thousands of organizations that rely on GIS and IT interoperability.

• ArcGIS: Engineered for Interoperability [PDF-607 KB, 16 pages]