ArcGIS Common Foundation

Many of the ArcObjects that make up ArcGIS are used within all of the ArcGIS products. The diagram below shows that the objects within the broad categories (Base Services, Data Access, Map Analysis, and Map Presentation) are contained in all three products. These four categories contain the majority of the GIS functionality exposed to developers and users in ArcGIS.

This commonality of function between ArcGIS products is important for developers to understand, since it means that when working in a particular category much of the development effort can be transferred among the ArcGIS products with little change to the software.

The ArcGIS architecture provides rich functionality to the developer, but it is not a closed system. The ArcGIS architecture is extendable by developers external to ESRI. ArcGIS provides many possibilities for the sharing and reuse of ArcObjects created by ESRI, you and others in the GIS community.