Chapter 1, Best Practices for Installing ArcGIS for Server, introduces the product and illustrates its architecture and components. It then takes you through three tracks for installing the product: the simple testing track, the advanced tech-savvy production track, and finally the last track, which will show you how to set up and configure ArcGIS for Server specifically as a virtualized environment.

Chapter 2, Authoring Web Services, teaches you the concept behind a web service and different communication protocols. You will also learn how to author and publish GIS services so various clients can consume them.

Chapter 3, Consuming GIS Services, illustrates how to consume services that you learned to author and publish in the previous chapter. You will learn how to visualize, edit, and analyze services using different clients.

Chapter 4, Planning and Designing GIS Services, is where you will analyze requirements and plan what services you want to have. You then will use the planning result to design the services you nominated with rich UML tools. You will also learn to design the underlying geodatabase, which is the source that feeds these services.

Chapter 5, Optimizing GIS Services, shows you how to select the correct parameters and preferences that will make your ArcGIS for Server run at its optimal state. Optimization techniques such as pooling, process isolation, and caching can be applied to bring the most out of your ArcGIS for Server and make your services run much more efficiently and effectively.

Chapter 6, Clustering and Load Balancing, introduces the concept of clustering, a new technique that allows you to group machines into a cluster. You can then assign services to run on each cluster based on machine power, memory, or even on networking factors.

Chapter 7, Securing ArcGIS for Server, introduces different security mechanisms available on ArcGIS for Server. GIS-tier authentication, Web authentication, and HTTPS can be applied interchangeably, depending on the security level desired by your organization.

Chapter 8, Server Logs, will teach you how to harvest the logs and reports generated by ArcGIS for Server and use them to monitor your system effectively. There are different levels of logs, ranging from abstract to detailed, and the level you configure for your setup will depend on how thoroughly you want to monitor your ArcGIS for Server. Fine and detailed logs come with a performance penalty.

Appendix A, Selecting the Right Hardware, describes how to select the right hardware for your ArcGIS for Server environment by providing general rules of thumb. I have come up with formulas that you can use to calculate the number of cores and amount of memory required to serve your users.

Appendix B, Server Architecture, will display the difference between the old and the new ArcGIS for Server architecture. You are going to learn how ArcGIS for Server has survived the 32-bit architecture locking trap and migrated to the more effective 64-bit architecture.

You need the following software for this book:

Whether you are a GIS user, analyst, DBA, system administrator, or programmer with a basic knowledge of Esri GIS, this book is for you. Although the book is tailored to fit system administration and analyst requirements, users can find it equally useful. Each chapter segregates the advanced technical tips from the basic and required tasks. This makes it easier for users to perform only the necessary steps to run the software.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Naturally, each GIS server generates its own logs and this is all saved by default at C:\arcgisserver\logs\."

A block of code is set as follows:

FINE Nov 17, 2013, 11:29:17 AM REST request received. Request size is 178 characters. Parcels.MapServer

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

<%  
Dim r
Randomize (Timer)
r = Rnd()
r = r * 100
r = Round(r)
Response.Write(r)
%>

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "From the View Log Messages panel, click on Query to view the current logfiles."

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