I guess I freaked out a couple ArcIMS folks with some of my posts this week. Don’t worry, ArcIMS is not going anywhere and will still be an integral part of the ESRI Server product family. 9.2 could be the last big release for ArcIMS, but I don’t think that is a bad thing. Remember, you no longer need to use those wacky Java admin tools, its all web based now and looks great. There are also improvements to ArcMap Server that will fix some weird bugs. Plus you get access to the new web ADF for .NET and Java so you can ditch the old HTML viewer. Actually if you do like the old HTML viewer, there have been improvements to that so you can continue to use that also. And one big change is something one of my clients will be very happy about:
Take advantage of improved security for served vector data. Image and ArcMap Image Services will not include geometry by default in the response to GET_FEATURES requests if the output mode is binary. With this change, ArcMap cannot be used to download vector data served in ArcIMS without the knowledge of the service provider.
Some seemed to have been taken back by the ArcInfo 7 reference Jack made toward ArcIMS. That isn’t a bad thing as Workstation is still going strong at 9.2 and I’d suspect ArcIMS will be going strong for years to come.
