Best Practices for Mission Applications

Environmental GIS Migration from Desktop to ArcGIS Server

—Mark Maguire, Tetra Tech

Tetra Tech developed and deployed an Environmental GIS (EGIS) application at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to support environmental remediation activities at the Center. The EGIS provides a custom, user-friendly interface to the ArcGIS environment that allows for the query, visualization, and analysis of environmental data. In order to take full advantage of ESRI's new technology and better accommodate the growing size of the KSC database (over 2.5 million records), Tetra Tech and KSC migrated the existing ArcGIS Desktop EGIS, developed in Visual Basic for Applications, to ArcGIS Server. This new platform supports advanced queries against the growing spatial database with improved response time, allowing KSC staff and contractors to more efficiently manage their environmental data. This presentation provides an overview of the successes and challenges involved in the migration process and discussion of new ArcGIS Server tools, such as AJAX, implemented to enhance application performance.