What’s Coming In ArcGIS 9.3.1?

ESRI has released a bundle of information on what’s coming in ArcGIS 9.3.1.

Firstly ArcGIS 9.3.1 should not be confused with a service pack release. ArcGIS 9.3.1 is a dot release which will include product enhancements and certain bug fixes.

ArcGIS 9.3.1 improves the performance of dynamic map publishing and increases the sharing of geographic information.

Being a dot release means that ArcGIS 9.3.1 will NOT be made available for users to downloaded. ESRI will automatically ship ArcGIS 9.3.1 to users current on maintenance. Service Pack’s will still be available for users to download from the ESRI Support Centre.

So what’s new? Well the focus has been on four main areas:

• High-Performance Dynamic Map Publishing
• Better Sharing of Geographic Information
• Enhanced Support for Java Developers
• Easy to Migrate

One of the key areas that I have really been looking forward to in ArcGIS 9.3.1 is the introduction of High-Performance Dynamic Map Publishing which will provide:

New faster drawing map service

• Outperforms equivalent ArcIMS services.
• Produces significantly better-looking maps.
• Shortens map caching time.

This will be a major step up for ArcGIS Server. While performance of cached maps is extremely fast, the map caching process itself is very time consuming. The data also remains static. The new High-Performance Dynamic Map Publishing should bridge the gap between cached and dynamic map services making it very easy for users to publish live data in a much faster manner.

Continuing to focus on performance:

New Map Service Publishing toolbar in ArcMap helps you tune-up your map documents before publishing to ArcGIS Server.

• Review and respond to errors, unsupported content, and warnings about items that will slow down your dynamic map services.
• Preview your map document and estimated rendering time.
• Save your map document to the new Map Service Definition format.

This new toolbar will really help users out there optimize their maps for the server. When working with dynamic map services, ArcGIS Server has to generate images on the demand and this can take a while depending on how complex the map is. If there are also errors, this can cause delays or other problems. The new map service publishing toolbar will be able to address these issues before the document is published to the ArcGIS Server.

A new file extension has also been introduced. .msd which stands for a Map Service Definition. At this stage not much is known as to what this document will contain.

One other note about ArcGIS 9.3.1:

Upgrading to ArcGIS 9.3.1 does not require uninstalling ArcGIS 9.3.

ArcGIS 9.3.1 is shaping up to be a very exciting release. Since geodatabases, map documents and API’s have not changed users will be compatible with ArcGIS 9.3. The introduction of these new features will really enhance ArcGIS 9.3 allowing users to take enterprise GIS to the next level.

The above information along with information on the other areas for ArcGIS 9.3.1 can be found here: http://www.esri.com/software/…