ESRI is pleased to announce the availability of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.™ (OGC ™), Web Mapping Service (WMS) client and server support with the Service Pack 2 release of ArcGIS 9. In addition, an enhanced WMS connector is now included with ArcIMS.

The OGC WMS is an Open GIS standard specification for interactive mapping based on requesting map images from a server over the Internet. OGC WMS client support in ArcGIS Desktop allows users to access these services over the Internet and add them to their maps as layers. ESRI offers both a WMS provider/server and a WMS client/consumer solution.

With Service Pack 2, users can access OGC WMS with the ArcGIS Desktop products (ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo). No other software is required. Services complying with versions 1.0.0, 1.1.0, and 1.1.1 of the OGC WMS specification are supported. OGC WMS services work in a similar way to ArcIMS image services. Also, developers working with ArcObjects can build solutions based on the WMS specification using the ArcObjects application program interface.

ArcIMS 9 Service Pack 2 includes an enhanced WMS connector. The connector now includes a Web-based administration tool to easily create a WMS service from an ArcIMS service. The WMS server-side solution has also been tested for compliance against the OGC test suite for WMS 1.1.1.

For more information on the WMS release and for more details on ESRI's commitment to interoperability and standards, visit http://www.esri.com/standards.