The Toolbox is more than just a cosmetic front-end to a command builder, however. By using the Microsoft 'Wizard' concept the user is walked through many common operations in a user-friendly way that leads to a much less steep learning curve than was previously the case. The Toolbox is also the home of customised tools. AML scripts, which must now be considered as legacy code, can be run using a 'Run AML Script Tool'. Having adopted the Microsoft 'look and feel', ESRI now support 'drag and drop between environments, so while one is working in Arc Toolbox, data sets can be dragged out of an ArcCatalog window and dropped into the Toolbox.
Similar links are possible between other modules.
ArcCatalog ArcCatalog is an excellent additional environment that acknowledges, perhaps for the first time, that the organisation of the multitude of files, and the folder structures, for a GIS project is far from trivial. ArcCatalog uses a Windows 'Explorer' style interface to allow data to be organised, browsed through and pre-viewed. Map data appears either as a set of thumbnails, or as full window maps. Tabular data appears as browsable and sortable tables. Given the complicated file structures and large number of files generated in ArcInfo, the Catalog goes a long way towards making the large amounts of data generated manageable.