Approaches for publishing services with ArcGIS
ArcGIS offers three approaches for sharing your information with others through web services. This gives you the flexibility to deploy your services on a server whose size, scope, and cost most closely match your needs. The three options are as follows:
- ArcGIS for Server
- ArcGIS Spatial Data Server
- ArcGIS Online hosted services
ArcGIS for Server
ArcGIS for Server offers services for all your GIS work, including mapping, geocoding, geoprocessing, imagery analysis, 3D data, network analysis, OGC access, mobile data extraction, and serving geographic features. It gives you access to a broad suite of security, logging, and tuning options.
With ArcGIS for Server, you can easily scale your server by adding more machines. You can deploy your server on-premises or in a cloud computing environment such as Amazon EC2. You can use many supported data types, and you have access to optional extensions for network analysis, data interoperability, geostatistical analysis, and more.
ArcGIS for Server includes a scriptable administrative API, and if you are so inclined, you can extend the functionality of your services using custom ArcObjects development.
ArcGIS for Server is offered in Basic, Standard, and Advanced editions that expose increasing levels of functionality.
- The Basic edition exposes geodata services and read-only feature services.
- The Standard edition exposes all types of GIS web services and can be supplemented with some extensions.
- The Advanced edition exposes all types of GIS web services, includes a mobile applications SDK, and can be supplemented with the full variety of extensions.
ArcGIS Spatial Data Server
ArcGIS Spatial Data Server is a light-footprint server that allows you to serve the geometries, attributes, symbols, and template information for vector data you have stored as tables in your spatially enabled databases. The Spatial Data Server offers basic mapping, querying, and editing operations on your tabular data.
The Spatial Data Server works through feature services, which stream the vector information as features to your browser or other client. The client must then do the work of drawing the features. Some advanced settings unique to ArcMap, such as label placement rules, are not available through feature services; you must use ArcGIS for Server map services to get this functionality.
The Spatial Data Server is installed separately from ArcGIS for Server. You can choose between installations for the Microsoft .NET Framework or the Java platform. The .NET edition supports IIS as its web server, while the Java edition supports Apache Tomcat, WebSphere, and WebLogic.
The Spatial Data Server works with spatial databases including ArcSDE geodatabases. The .NET Spatial Data Server can also serve data from spatial columns in Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Windows Azure SQL Database, while the Java Spatial Data Server supports spatially enabled data from PostgreSQL, Oracle, and DB2.
ArcGIS Online hosted services
ArcGIS Online hosted services allows you to upload a GIS map to an Esri-hosted server and have it immediately available as a web service. There are two types of services you can deploy:
- Feature services expose the geometry, attributes, and symbol information for vector GIS features. They are appropriate for displaying, querying, and editing your business data on top of web basemaps.
- Tiled map services expose a set of pregenerated map images (known as a map cache) that can be viewed as basemaps in a web mapping application. When you publish your map to ArcGIS Online hosted services, you can also ask the server to create and store a cache of tiles. You can then bring the tiles into your web map by accessing the service's URL.
Using a combination of tiled map services and feature services in your application allows fast mapping while supporting query and editing operations.
An advantage of using hosted services is that you don't have to install any server software or tune the services. The services run in an Esri-administered cloud environment in which the server automatically scales up to meet demand.
ArcGIS Online hosted services is available through organizational subscriptions to ArcGIS Online.
Authoring, sharing, and using services
ArcGIS for Desktop can help you author and share your GIS resources on any of the above types of servers. In the case of a map, you'll typically do your cartography in ArcMap, then choose a menu option to share the map as a service. You'll be guided through the process of analyzing your map for performance bottlenecks and publishing the map.
For other types of resources that aren't created in ArcMap, such as locators, you can right-click the item in the Catalog tree and choose the option to share it as a service. A geoprocessing model can be published by right-clicking a result in the Results window and choosing the option to share it as a service.
Once a service is published, you can use it in web, desktop, and mobile applications. Services have web addresses, or URLs, that client applications can use to access them. When you use or develop an application, you'll provide the URLs of the services you want to use. Your application goes to the URLs and begins working with the services to bring in the maps or other GIS functionality that you request. This pattern is the same whether you're working with services on ArcGIS for Server, the Spatial Data Server, or ArcGIS Online hosted services.
The remaining topics in this help contain more detailed instructions for sharing your GIS data.