Introduction

ArcGIS Server is designed to deploy sophisticated GIS functionality from centralized servers to support enterprise GIS implementations and applications. ArcGIS Server provides the framework for developers to create focused GIS Web applications and services that can be utilized by clients including browser-based, ArcGIS Desktop, and ArcGIS Engine applications. The entire ArcGIS system is built and extended using software components called ArcObjects. ArcGIS Server is an object server for ArcObjects.

Use this guide to get ArcGIS Server up and running. If you are new to ArcGIS Server, install the features that have been preselected. This installation choice will install ArcGIS Server Object Manager and ArcGIS Server Object Container on the same machine. This configuration is useful for those with limited resources or light server loads. Once you are familiar with ArcGIS Server, use this guide and the ArcGIS Server Help to help define your site configuration and install ArcGIS Server on a distributed system.

ArcGIS Server consists of two primary entities, a GIS server and Application Developer Framework (ADF). The GIS server consists of a server object manager (SOM) and server object container (SOC). The ADF provides the framework to build Web applications and Web services that make use of ArcObjects running in the GIS server.