Designed for Interoperability

A modern GIS platform must support this enlarged vision of GIS and be implemented in a manner that readily enables applications to support an organization's work flows and business requirements. ArcGIS has done this by providing a generic software platform that supports an abundance of geographic information types as well as comprehensive tools for data management, editing, analysis, and display.

In this context, GIS software can be increasingly thought of as an IT infrastructure for assembling traditional GIS as well as central systems, spatial data infrastructures, and enabling GIS participation in services-oriented architectures all of which can be interconnected using Web frameworks.

ArcGIS is designed to satisfy evolving requirements for scalable, comprehensive, and standards-based computing for GIS.

• GIS Standards and Interoperability (ESRI Canada technical paper) [PDF-830 KB, 16 pages]