New Version Of Free GIS Portal Toolkit Improves Data Access

GIS Portals have been a talking point for a while and ESRI has published a new press release which talks about the new GIS Portal Toolkit which is being offered free of charge.

Redlands, California—To further improve geographic information system (GIS) data access over the Web, ESRI has updated its GIS Portal Toolkit for ArcGIS. GIS Portal Toolkit is a free technology and services solution for implementing local, regional, national, and global spatial data infrastructure (SDI) portals. The toolkit gives users a Web site starter and all the functional capabilities needed to deploy a GIS portal for an organization’s SDI.

The previous version of the GIS Portal Toolkit offered by ESRI was based on ArcIMS. The new GIS Portal Toolkit is based on ArcGIS Server and comes bundled with tons of enhancements.

Some of the new enhancements include:

GIS Portal Toolkit is now based on ESRI’s ArcGIS Server technology and includes the following enhancements: support for finalized Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), specification standards; a REST-style interface for searching and supporting OpenSearch, GeoRSS, and KML; LDAP authentication support for improved security; configurable support for ISO 19139 metadata profiles, Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata and Dublin Core metadata; integrated clip-zip-ship function for data download; and improved context-sensitive help and product documentation.

While the GIS Portal Toolkit is freely available, it cannot be downloaded. A request can be made by contacting your distributor.

This full press release can be found here: http://www.esri.com/news/… and full information about the new GIS Portal Toolkit can be found here: http://www.esri.com/software/…