Jesse Theodore, ESRI Tel. One of the key features of ArcIMS 3 is its ability to establish a common platform for exchange of Web-enabled GIS data and services. On the serverside, ArcIMS includes a wide variety of functionality, and future extensions will deliver even more GIS capabilities. In the box ArcIMS includes HTML and Java clients plus supports a full suite of other ESRI software such as ArcExplorer, ArcPad, and other devices.
Users can also develop custom desktop applications using the ArcIMS connector interface.
The ArcIMS Java and HTML client viewers process data on the client machine, performing many tasks without further interaction with the server. ArcIMS offers a large variety of server and clientside options, which really distinguishes this software from the competition. For example, city workers can integrate their local parcel data with flood information from FEMA, elevation information from USGS, or other environmental data and combine this information on their desktop to perform specialized query and analysis. The ArcIMS server technology is part of a multitier architecture. The ArcIMS framework consists of clients, services, and data management.