ArcGIS Server 9.2 ADF Licensing Issue!

Ok I can see from reading James’s post: http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2007/03/23/the-webadf-licensing-issue-revisited/, he is not happy with about the fact that the ADF has to be licensed if you want to run it on another machine. I know quite a few people are unhappy about this and as I mentioned in yesterdays post it is a highly debated topic. I also mentioned I cannot really comment on this issue but I can provide some help for people out there that are being affected by it.

Rather than complaining now about the issue, I think you have to tackle issue on a project specific basis. I think you need to look very closely at your customer needs and also understand quite thoroughly the capabilities of ArcGIS Server 9.2. Like someone mentioned “that is the business model for today” so we have to work with it.

The need to have the ADF running on another machine has been lessened in ArcGIS Server 9.2. I know quite a few customers still “want” a 3-tier architecture, but you can work around this. The ADF is fast!, very fast in fact!. Depending on the complexity of applications you are creating for users, the majority of the applications are going to either make extensive use of the ADF or the ArcGIS Server or both. If you are making extensive use of the ArcGIS Server then you are obviously doing a lot of work against the SOC’s and intensive geoprocessing tasks or editing. Even with this you need to measure it. If you are developing an application that is viewing and browsing with some searching then you are making use of the ADF so the utilisation of the ArcGIS Server is nothing.

So, let’s look at a scenario. You are developing an AJAX web based viewing application for a customer. The application makes use of cached layers, and has a searching capability as well. The user can type something into the search and if instantly zoomed to the location which is also highlighted using the graphics layer. Pretty simple application yea? Alright well let’s look at what’s happening behind the scenes. This application would make extensive use of the ADF. It does not need ArcGIS Server to do any of things tasks mentioned. Why? Ok so this comes down to design and implementation. You can design the searching to make a webservice call which would be sitting at your business logic tier so that covers that side of things. For the maps, browsing, scrolling this we will configure ArcGIS Server to serve our cached tiles. These will be served out by the ADF. So ArcGIS Server is doing nothing. Now can someone justify to me why you would want to the place the ADF on a separate machine when the utilisation on the ArcGIS Server is 0?

That same scenario also applies depending on the editing you are doing. I know the thresholds very well as I have done extensive testing with the ADF and ArcGIS Server 9.2. I think the point I’m trying to get across is that tackle it on a project to project basis. Know the needs of the customer well and then come up with innovative ideas to implement it. Make the customer understand the ArcGIS Server 9.2 architecture. For a web based application you should be making use of cached services. If you are not I would re-think the reasons behind it. It instantly takes the load of ArcGIS server and also makes the maps instantaneous. Suddenly for a viewing application that makes your ArcGIS Server redundant!