ArcObjects SDK Server toolbox

Question

Seems to be a recurring nightmare here, but it seems ESRI UK gave us a bum steer. You do not need to install ArcObjects .NET SDK (and, of course, the obligatory VS IDE), but you do need to have an installation of one of the desktop products in order to be able to use the dlls.

Heres a link to the help page, but it appears you need to have ArcMap/ArcCatalog/etc installed in order to fully be able to deploy any application you've developed using ArcObjects? Is this insanity on my part?

I would have thought the easiest way would be to bundle the dlls, but am told you can reference the GAC dlls (Not too sure I understand this so a steer would be appreciated). However, ESRI docs seem to clearly state they cannot be deployed without an appropriate ArcGIS Desktop application installed.

Surely this is just for custom Desktop tools and not AGS tools?

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This is a deployments run down for ArcObject projects.

If your building ...
ArcMap Addins - need to have ArcMap installed to run the addin

ArcEngine apps - if a licensed copy of ArcMap is already on the machine it will run with that license(no ArcEngine installation needed). If there is no ArcMap, then a licensed copy of the ArcEngine Runtime is needed.

Server Extensions - need ArcGis server installed on the machine.

If the code in the project your building uses libraries from any of the other SDKs then the supporting SDKs or ESRI application needs to be installed.

Answer 2

The information in your link applies to ArcGIS Desktop (or ArcEngine) components only.

As long as you do not reference any parts of ArcObjects not present on the server, you are good to go as all the required assemblies are present in the GAC in a ArcGIS Server environment.

Example: you cannot use anything from the ESRI.ArcGIS.ArcMap library (see the Supported with: ArcView, ArcEditor, ArcInfo at the top of the page), but nothing prevents you from referencing ESRI.ArcGIS.Geometry (Supported with: `ArcView, ArcEditor, ArcInfo, Server).