ArcGIS Server is the predominant platform used to develop GIS applications for
the Web. There are a number of programming languages you can use to develop
applications with ArcGIS Server, including JavaScript, Flex, and Silverlight.
JavaScript has become the preferred language for developing applications on this
platform, since it can be used for both web and mobile applications and doesn’t
require the installation of a plugin for the application to be used in a browser.
Flex and Silverlight both fall short as languages for mobile development and
both require the use of a plugin for the application to run in a browser.
This book will teach you how to build web-based GIS applications using the ArcGIS
API for JavaScript. Using a practical, hands-on style of learning, you will learn how
to develop fully functional applications with ArcGIS Server and develop a skill set
that is in high demand.
You will learn how to create maps and add geographic layers from a variety of
sources, including tiled and dynamic map services. In addition, you’ll learn how
to add graphics to the map and stream geographic features to the browser using
FeatureLayer. Most applications also include specific functionalities implemented
by ArcGIS Server as tasks. You’ll learn how to use the various tasks provided by
ArcGIS Server, including queries, identification of features, finding features by
attributes, geoprocessing tasks, and more. Finally, you’ll learn just how easy it is
to develop mobile applications with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript

GIS is a mature industry, with its roots in the late 60s in forestry and county
polygon maintenance through vector topology (others such as GRASS and IDRISI
concentrated on the raster domain). Storing location and attribute information has
been a challenge, not only since the early days of severely limited computing power
and storage space, but even today in the management of ever-growing spatial and
tabular repositories. This has been handled in several ways: two tenors being Esri
Arc/Info separating the spatial and the tabular repositories, and Oracle Spatial
embedding them in database tables. Esri evolved from the desktop to the server
by offering SDE, a layer between its data and RDBMS that effectively spatialises
database tables.
After the arrival of the Internet, further web services have been devised by
commercial and open source technologies alike, but that is a subject in its own
right? And while RDBMS scales hardware such as Oracle Exadata, as data expands
to petabytes in real time, a whole other arena such as Amazon services or SAP
in-memory addresses Big Data. But what about big geo data?
ArcGIS for Server is the third generation that adds a host of management, integrity,
and performance tools designed to help implement scalable enterprise GIS.
Hussein is a geo enthusiast, whose chief concern is to make the “Gen 3” mid-section
above amenable to geo experts and project engineers alike. As a practitioner in the
field, he brings a deft touch to the ins-and-outs of this powerful yet complex offering.
Esri being the de facto server geo standard, this book will benefit a wide array of
infrastructure administrators and application engineers. Yet Hussein’s clear prose
explains it well enough; his first principles will allow his audience to apply their
lessons learned to other platforms, and therein lies the “sweet spot”: