Why use ArcGIS Engine?

The capabilities of ArcGIS Engine are extensive. As an ArcGIS Engine developer, you can implement these and many other functions using its developer kit:
The items listed below, if deployed, are included in the standard ArcGIS Engine Runtime functionality and would not require any of the additional extensions.
  • Display a map with multiple map layers, such as roads, streams, and boundaries.
  • Pan and zoom throughout a map.
  • Identify features on a map.
  • Search for and find features on a map.
  • Display labels with text from field values.
  • Draw images from aerial photography or satellite imagery.
  • Draw graphic features, such as points, lines, circles, and polygons.
  • Draw descriptive text.
  • Select features along lines and inside boxes, areas, polygons, and circles.
  • Select features within a specified distance of other features.
  • Find and select features with a Structured Query Language (SQL) expression.
  • Render features with thematic methods, such as value map, class breaks, and dot density.
  • Dynamically display real-time or time series data.
  • Find locations on a map by geocoding addresses or street intersections.
  • Transform the coordinate system of your map data.
  • Perform geometric operations on shapes to create buffers; calculate differences; and find intersections, unions, or inverse intersections of shapes.
  • Manipulate the shape or rotation of a map.
  • Create and update geographic features and their attributes.
  • Execute a Geoprocessing tool

Use the links below to jump ahead if desired:

Editing features

A software authorization file controls the availability of the various levels of ArcGIS Engine Runtime functionality. For more details on deploying and configuring the ArcGIS Engine Runtime, refer to the Licensing and deployment section.
ArcGIS Engine developer kit enables you to build applications that create, modify, and remove vector-shaped features in a geodatabase or shapefile. The standard ArcGIS Engine Runtime is used to run applications that edit shapefiles or the simple features of a personal geodatabase. However, leveraging the full function of the enterprise geodatabase, the Geodatabase Update extension of the ArcGIS Engine Runtime is required.

Spatial modeling and analysis

You can extend the capabilities of ArcGIS Engine by adding the Spatial extension to ArcGIS Engine Runtime. This extension provides a broad range of powerful spatial modeling and analysis functions. You can create, query, map, and analyze cell-based raster data; perform integrated raster or vector analysis; derive new information from existing data; query information across multiple data layers; and fully integrate cell-based raster data with vector data in a custom ArcGIS Engine application.

An application, developed using the MapControl, that utilizes the Spatial extension for the ArcGIS Engine Runtime
For example, you can:
  • Convert features (points, lines, or polygons) to raster.
  • Create raster buffers based on distance or proximity from features or rasters.
  • Generate density maps from point features.
  • Derive contours, slope, viewshed, aspect, and hillshades.
  • Perform grid classification and display.
  • Use data from standard formats including TIFF, BIL, IMG, USGS DEM, SDTS, DTED, and many others.

3D visualization and more

The ArcGIS Engine Runtime 3D extension extends the capabilities of ArcGIS Engine even further by enabling you to build applications that effectively visualize and analyze surface and globe data using SceneControl and GlobeControl. You can create applications that view a surface from multiple viewpoints, query a surface, determine what is visible from a chosen location on a surface, and display a realistic perspective image by draping raster and vector data over a surface.
Java code for the inset GlobeControl-based application
You can, for example:
  • Display ArcScene and ArcGlobe documents.
  • Perform interactive perspective viewing, including pan and zoom, rotate, tilt, and fly-through simulations, for presentation and analysis.
  • Display real-world surface features, such as buildings.
  • Perform viewshed and line-of-sight analysis, spot height interpolation, profiling, and steepest path determination.
Display of SceneControl-based application

Network analysis

The Network extension to ArcGIS Engine is new at version 9.1 and provides developers with the capability to create applications that utilize network data in a variety of formats and creating and editing network datasets. The following network functions are available to developers:
  • Path—Find a path through a set of network locations that minimizes some impedance (cost) attribute
  • Tour—Determine the minimum-cost path to reach a series of stops; also determines the order in which the stops are visited.
  • Directions—Generate a series of directions for the user.
  • Closest Facility—Given a network location (an incident) finds the closest facilities.
  • Service Areas—Find all network elements within a given distance from a network location.