Essential Information for IT Professionals

How You Benefit

Open, Scalable, Standards-Based GIS Technology for Your Organisation

GIS technology provides the framework for a shared spatial data infrastructure and a distributed architecture. Geographic data can be gathered and organized to support the generation of information products that are integrated into the business strategy of your organization.

ESRI has developed its products based on open standards to ensure a high level of interoperability across platforms, databases, development languages, and applications. ESRI is committed to supporting and actively leading efforts associated with such standards.

The following is an overview of the specific standards in hardware, software, and Web services that ESRI software supports.

• Handheld Devices: ESRI software supports Windows CE, Pocket PC, Web browsers, J2ME, and 802.11 to enable our users to leverage the growing use of handheld devices.
• Desktop Computers: ESRI provides a range of desktop software that is supported on Windows, Java, Unix, and Linux.
• Servers: ESRI provides a range of server software that is supported on Unix, Linux, Windows, and Java.
• DBMS: ESRI provides software that supports the following commercial database management systems (DBMS): Oracle, IBM DB2, Informix, and SQL Server including support for all spatial types.
• Networks: ESRI software supports protocols such as TCP/IP and HTTP, allowing for the transfer of data and HTML documents.
• Developer Environments: Users have a choice of development environment when using ESRI software including VB, C++, .NET, and Java (J2ME, J2SE, J2EE, ASP/JSP).

Web Services/APIs: Web standards such as XML, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL are supported. Web APIs such as WFS, WMS, XML, and GML are also supported.

For your business strategy, this means compatibility and interoperability support with major enterprise systems such as

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Customer resource management (CRM)
• Enterprise application integration (EAI)
• Work management systems and others

For GIS technology, this means standards that support

• Data sharing
• Direct data access
• Metadata
• Web APIs and services
• Data models

Geography and GIS—Sustaining Our World

Our goal is to make GIS a mainstream technology for facilitating better interoperability and integration with the rest of the IT infrastructure. We envision GIS as an integral part of the coordinated information management system, not just a project here and there.