ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit

The ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit is a set of mapping components and developer resources that lets programmers add dynamic mapping and GIS capabilities to existing applications or build new custom mapping and GIS solutions. With the ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit, developers have unprecedented flexibility for creating customized interfaces for maps. Developers can use one of several industry-standard, interactive development environments to create unique applications or combine the ArcGIS Engine components with other software components to create advanced GIS applications.

ArcGIS Engine development with Visual Studio .NET

The ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit is not a product for end users; it is designed for people who are developing applications. The developer builds applications based on ArcGIS Engine and delivers those programs to end users. An important feature of ArcGIS Engine is that the map can be either an incidental or central element in an application. This feature makes ArcGIS Engine particularly well-suited to specific GIS solutions.

The ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit provides access to a large collection of ArcObjects components (the software components from which ArcGIS is built) and also includes several developer controls for creating a high-quality mapping user interface. The visual controls are available as .NET controls, JavaBeans components, and ActiveX controls. The Developer Kit is available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems.

Also available through the ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit are the objects that comprise several ArcGIS extensions. The extensions available at this time are 3D, Spatial, Geodatabase Update, and Network.

ArcGIS Engine Developer Help System

The ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit also includes all the developer resources to support comprehensive development tasks. An integrated help system is provided for several application program interfaces (COM, Java, .NET, and C++) along with object model diagrams and samples for each part of ArcGIS Engine. ArcGIS Engine Developer Kit allows you to build and test ArcGIS Engine applications that include functionality contained within ArcGIS Engine Runtime and all its extensions. Deploying these applications then requires an ArcGIS Engine Runtime license and the appropriate extension.