ArcGIS Support for Standards

ArcGIS Server provides enhanced support for the three leading OGC Web standards: WMS, WFS, and WCS. With the recent announcement from OGC that KML 2.2 is now an official OGC standard, ArcGIS Server at 9.3 will comply with the OGC specification of Keyhole Markup Language (KML).

Enhanced Support for OGC WMS

In ArcGIS Desktop, support has been added for accessing WMS 1.3.0 services, and it is much easier to access specific layers of WMS services containing large numbers of layers.

In ArcCatalog, you can now expand WMS services to access and drill into the layers as well as layer collections you want to work with and drag them directly into your map or globes.

Also, in the ArcMap context menu for layers in a WMS service, a new command enables you to add WMS legends to your map as a graphic.

ArcGIS Server supports the WMS 1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, and 1.3 specifications and complies with the ISO 19128 WMS standard. At 9.3, this support has been enhanced for both the ISO-certified 19128 WMS standard and the OGC styled layer descriptor (SLD) specification. The symbology in the SLD documents can be rule driven, the rules being specified using the OGC filter encoding (FE) specification.

Enhanced Support for OGC WFS

ArcGIS Server supports WFS 1.1 and the simple features profile of GML. ArcGIS Server also supports Transactional WFS (WFS-T) 1.1. This allows any GIS client to carry out transactions against geodatabases using the WFS-T service published by ArcGIS Server.

Support Added for OGC WCS

An Add WCS Server command has been added to ArcGIS Desktop, enabling you to expand the server to see all the individual WCS services it contains. When added to ArcMap or ArcGlobe, a WCS service works like any other raster data source.

The layer properties dialog box for a layer referencing a WCS service is the same one used for other rasters.
Raster geoprocessing tools and ArcGIS Spatial Analyst tools support WCS layers as inputs.
You can export from an OGC WCS service to a raster dataset.

ArcGIS Server allows users to publish any raster data type as an OGC WCS 1.0, 1.1, or 1.1.1 service. Using the WCS specification

Clients can get subsets of the data.
Clients can request server-side resampling of the data.
Geoprocessing models that consume WCS services can be published.

For example, a WCS service with precipitation data can be used as an input to a geoprocessing model for calculating near real-time flood delineation.

Enhanced Support for KML

KML support in ArcGIS Server now enables map and image services to automatically generate a network link that can be accessed via a URL.

Services can easily be integrated into Web maps.
Services available can be browsed and displayed in ArcGIS Explorer, Google Earth, or any other application that directly supports KML.
URLs to your services can be embedded directly on your organization's Web site.
Service metadata gets indexed by search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo), allowing your services to be found simply by doing Web searches.

ArcGIS Server supports KML 2.2

In ArcGIS Desktop, tools are included that enable you to quickly convert maps and layers to KML. This makes it easy to use your data with any client capable of reading KML including ArcGIS Explorer, Google Earth, and Google Maps.

A new HTML pop-up functionality in ArcMap, ArcGlobe, and ArcScene enables you to define and format how the attributes of features and related URLs will appear when layers are accessed as KML.
Support for accessing KML in ArcGlobe has been improved to include support for KML 2.0 and 2.1 tags, screen overlays, auto-refresh behavior in KML network links, and Collaborative Design Activity (COLLADA) models in KML.

Support Added for COLLADA

ArcGIS includes support for the COLLADA file format. Using these new capabilities, ArcGIS users will be able to leverage COLLADA files for a variety of purposes in ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server as well as display more realistic 3D models.

COLLADA files can be used as 3D point symbology in ArcGlobe and ArcScene.
Features symbolized using COLLADA files can be served via the ArcGIS Server 3D extension.
Users can import COLLADA files into the geodatabase and directly display them in ArcGlobe.