ArcGIS 9.2 affirms Esri's commitment to building an open and interoperable GIS platform with the new improvements in the core software and in the ArcGIS Data Interoperability extension. These include ArcGIS 9.2 support for OGC WMS, WFS, and GML Simple Features on both the client and server. ArcGIS 9.2 also embraces the ISO 19139 metadata standard. In addition, there is greatly enhanced support for reading, exporting, and working with CAD drawings from AutoCAD and MicroStation.

The ArcGIS Data Interoperability extension is also updated with FME 2006 GB, the latest release of the core Safe Software engine. This release enhances support for many of the existing formats, including OGC GML Simple Features and adds support for several new formats, including Google Earth Data Exchange (KML), MapInfo TAB (replaces old MapInfo TAB reader), tabular data, Esri geodatabase (file based), Esri ArcGIS 9.x layer, and GML 3.1.1.

Esri is currently finishing support for the Web Coverage Service (WCS) and is developing an application that supports WFS-T as part of ArcGIS Server. These developments are scheduled to be available after the ArcGIS 9.2 release.

Some standards organizations that Esri actively participates in include ANSI/INCITS L1, ISO/TC 211, OASIS, and OGC.

In addition to enhanced standards support, Esri's open architecture supports spatial extraction, transformation, and loading; hundreds of direct read/write data formats; KML; CAD-GIS data sharing; various data models; SQL access to the geodatabase; open APIs (Java, .NET); SOAP/UDDI/WSDL; and the openly published data formats for shapefile and geodatabase.

More Information

For more information, visit www.esri.com/standards.