Top 10 Improvements in ArcGIS 10.1 for Server

Ismael Chivite counts down the top 10 improvements coming in ArcGIS 10.1 for Server inlcuding native 64-bit support, simplified architecture and installation, and dramatically improved performance.

Jul 11th, 2011

Start From:
Player Color:



00:01Are you ready for ArcGIS Server? Are you? Because I'm not. I'm just kidding.

00:07Number 10 is about how you work with global datasets in your web browsers, and I have it first…

00:14…not because it's the least important, but because you can take advantage of these today.

00:20Maps like this one with edges on the side are actually history.

00:24All the web APIs today support continuous panning around the globe; no more edges in your maps anymore.

00:35And this will work with any basemap from ArcGIS Online but also with your own services, of course.

00:41I pulled this coral reefs map service; it was built with 9.3. And here you have a service that has time-aware layers.

00:50Look how nicely the animation crosses the dateline. Isn't it beautiful?

00:57Okay. But it's not just about map navigation.

00:59It's also about all the GIS operations that you do, drawing graphics, selecting geometries across the dateline.

01:07Let me draw a line between Los Angeles and Australia. The red dashed line you see is the geodesic line.

01:13Look how well it transitions over so you get across. It displays fantastically across the dateline as well.

01:21Okay. Number 9.

01:25Number 9 is for those of you who want to create fully functional web applications but without programming.

01:31I'm going to build with you, all together, an application from scratch in less than a minute with the new Silverlight Viewer.

01:39Let me start by pushing the biggest button you see, and actually the only one, Create New Application.

01:45You start by picking your intelligent map, which will kick-start your configuration.

01:51Let me center the map in my favorite area, Hawaii, and now I want to add a few layers on top.

01:58These layers are coming from my own server. Simply browse to it, display the layers, and add them to the map.

02:06Now that I am done with the content, I want to add functionality, tools…

02:10…and there are many tools available out of the box.

02:13Tools for selections, for filtering, for editing, printing, geoprocessing.

02:18Let's add a geoprocessing task. Same philosophy. You navigate to your server; it will list all the available tasks…

02:25…and then you simply configure the tool. It's that easy. The final touch to me, to my application, is the title.

02:33I want to change the title. And this is pretty handy. Those are different layouts that I can apply.

02:39There are many that ship in the gallery. At this point, I'm ready to deploy my application, give it a name.

02:48And now anyone that has a web browser can actually access my application right away.

02:55Let's zoom in a little bit around the geoprocessing task that I added.

02:59I will define a location in the river network and execute the task.

03:04Now, this Silverlight Viewer is now available in the beta site…

03:08…so you can actually download it today and start playing with it.

03:13Now let's talk about what is coming in the next release of [ArcGIS] Server in 10.1…

03:21…and I know for sure you have been waiting for number 8. It is 64-bit native execution for [ArcGIS] Server.

03:33What makes number 7 is the new architecture. In 10.1, ArcGIS [Server] becomes a pure web services GIS server.

03:43It's a peer-to-peer architecture, which is much simpler and robust.

03:49This architecture leads to number 6, with dramatically simplified installation and the configuration of [ArcGIS] Server on premises…

03:59…in your private cloud, or in your public cloud as well.

04:02And finally, number 5, ArcGIS Server 10.1 is much more IT-friendly.

04:08We have eliminated many of the dependencies we had before on DCOM. DCOM is gone.

04:14And the Windows registry on MainWin on Linux.

04:18If you are a Linux user, actually 10.1 is great news for you because of this new architecture.

04:24We also have dramatically enhanced access to databases, adding new databases like Netezza.

04:31Whether you use SDE or you don't, ArcGIS Server in 10.1 gives you great tools…

04:36…to display your data and even edit your data over the Internet.

04:42Now let's discuss some functional enhancements that we have in 10.1.

04:47Number 4 is the ability to use live or historical traffic data to enhance your network analysis.

04:56Here is a map of San Diego, a traffic map of San Diego. You have to admit, it's a gorgeous map, isn't it?

05:04Let's zoom in a little bit. This is the status of the traffic as of now.

05:08Let's go back a few hours in time, and you'll see a complete different picture of this map.

05:15Now what if you could use this information and incorporate it to do your own routing analysis with it?

05:25This is the route as of five a.m. in the morning; this is the same route at one o'clock.

05:32You can see that it's completely different. Why? Because it's taking the traffic into consideration.

05:37Imagine how powerful it is to take this traffic information, your business data…

05:42…your workflows, and make better decisions, thanks to this traffic data.

05:47Number 3. Number 3 I think will be of interest if you are a web application developer.

05:55You are asking us to enhance map services and basically to do two things - handle not just a dozen or hundreds of layers…

06:02…but thousands of layers effectively in our map services.

06:07And number two, you want web application developers to have complete freedom…

06:12…to define which layers are drawn in which order and with what symbology.

06:17And that is possible in 10.1 with a new capability that we added. It's called dynamic layers.

06:23With it, I built this application, which illustrates one scenario where this capability comes handy.

06:29I have on the side hundreds of variables. I can pick any of them and create a thematic map of the US.

06:37Users can also change the symbology of the map by applying a different color ramp…

06:42…or maybe picking a different class break for the thematic map.

06:47You can also, at any point, let's say add an additional map on the side…

06:52…compare side by side, and highlight the classes you want to look at.

06:58The beauty of this web application is that all the maps you saw were rendered server side…

07:06…and none of the maps you saw were ever preconfigured on the server.

07:11The application is completely taking control over which layers are drawn and what symbology is being used.

07:18This is a very powerful concept coming in into 10.1 that hopefully will allow you to build very cool applications.

07:29Number 2. I'm not going to disclose what number 2 is about just yet.

07:34Let me talk a little bit about this application.

07:36It has a basemap from ArcGIS Online, a cached map; a map service on top displaying fire information.

07:43I also drew a graphic in red myself, drawing on the application, and executed a geoprocessing tool.

07:49What you have been asking us to do is to take all of this information and take it to paper as a high-quality map…

07:59…printed in a small piece of paper and a larger piece of paper, but a beautiful map.

08:04And we have created in 10.1 an out-of-the-box, high-quality print service.

08:10So you can create high-quality maps on demand from web and mobile applications.

08:22This is, many of you know, this is the number one enhancement request in the Ideas site, so we really appreciate your feedback.

08:30Number 1 is number 1 because this is what all servers are about. Performance, performance, performance.

08:37You're familiar with the concept of drive-time polygons. This is a sophisticated operation.

08:42In 10 and 9.3.1, takes a few seconds to execute, especially if you are using large datasets.

08:48In my case, I'm using a network dataset with every street in the US and in Canada.

08:53I'm also taking this polygon and querying an eight million US census block table…

09:00…to generate the population chart on the side.

09:03As I said, this takes a few seconds in 10. In 10.1, we accelerated this a little bit. Okay?

09:14You see that? Let me do it again. You see that, huh? Bang, bang, bang.

09:21Wait a second, because if you like that, you truly don't understand how 10.1 is.

09:28Look at that beauty, how it moves as I move the mouse around.

09:32It's fast enough that I can do on-the-fly analysis as I move the mouse in my map.

Copyright 2015 Esri


No comments. Be the first to write one below.

Comment on this Video