ESRI is pleased to announce that ArcIMS 9 Route Server, the latest version of ESRI's routing extension to ArcIMS, is now shipping. With this new version, users have a wider selection of data and can perform routing via web browsers.

ArcIMS Route Server offers the ability to incorporate point-to-point driving directions and fast, accurate routing into Web sites built with ArcIMS. It calculates optimal routes based on time and distance and accommodates multiple stops along a route. ArcIMS Route Server also allows you to geocode and reverse geocode against the same highly compressed, optimized national data set.

Highlights of the new version include:

New data - ArcIMS Route Server can use commercial data sets from NAVTEQ, Tele Atlas (GDT), and DMTI that have been optimized to perform routing and geocoding within the ArcIMS Route Server extension. Data is currently available from these vendors covering North America and Europe. It is also now possible to introduce additional data sets for use with ArcIMS Route Server. Upon request, ESRI can work with data vendors to optimize their data for use with ArcIMS Route Server.

.NET support - Developers can build their own custom solutions with .NET in addition to Java, Active Server Pages, Java Server Pages, ColdFusion, or ArcXML-a GIS extension to standard Extensible Markup Language.

Dynamic barriers - Users can now set up their Web sites to allow interactive hosting of barriers or a live data feed (such as traffic incidents in an ArcSDE layer). ArcIMS Route Server can then generate routes that take these barriers into account.

Optimized routing - This feature allows the order in which the stops are traversed to be optimized. It uses "as-the-crow-flies" distances to calculate the optimal stop order.

Reverse intersection - Users can find the intersection that is closest to a selected location.

New platform support - ArcIMS 9 Route Server is now supported on the Sun Microsystems Solaris operating system.

To learn more about ArcIMS 9 Route Server, visit http://www.esri.com/routeserver.