can it possible to use old version of arcgIS desktop, say ver 9.3.1, if we develop a geodatabase using arcGIS 10.1. The above answers were very useful will make me to understand more on arcgis server, since we are planning Thanks
Suplimentary Question: may be question is not understood well..we have old version of arcgis desktop 9.3.1, now we proposing and wanted to develop geodatabase system using new version of arcgis server i.e 10.1, will it compatible.
Is your question about whether you can open a 10.1 geodatabase with ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1?
If so the answer is no. ESRI's stance until recently has been one of backwards-compatibility only. Meaning the client version must be at or newer than the geodatabase release version. See the compatibility table here: Client and geodatabase compatibility
Interestingly, at 10.1, they added forwards-compatibility for ArcGIS 10.0 clients to be able to access ArcGIS 10.1 geodatabases with some limitations.
See the "Interrelease compatibility support" section of this help topic: What's new for geodatabases in ArcGIS 10.1
Note that you can create previous release version personal and file geodatabases from newer versions using geoprocessing tools:
Also older clients can in general consume services from newer versions of ArcGIS Server (link), although documentation for this is sparse. I could find no "ArcGIS Server 10.1 compatibility matrix", for example.
you should open the data in newer version then exported and save it to old version. so then you can open the data in your 9.3.
