What's New at 9.1 for ArcGIS Developers

This document specifically addresses differences between version 9.0 and 9.1 of the ArcObjects developer platform. If you are interested in differences between the 8.x platform and 9.0, see the document 'What's New at 9.0 for ArcGIS Developers'.

Existing ArcObjects developers will find the following technical documents helpful in migrating existing code and applications to 9.1.

The following sections provide an overview of additions, enhancements, and modifications in ArcGIS 9.1 that impact developers and their work with ArcObjects.

New libraries

At 9.1, some new functionality added to the ArcGIS platform has resulted in new libraries being added within the ArcGIS Engine and ArcGIS Desktop products. These include:

For ArcGIS Engine:
- NetworkAnalyst—provides objects for working with networks, thereby enabling you to include some network analysis in your developed applications. Requires Network Analyst extension licensing.
For ArcGIS Desktop:
- NetworkAnalystUI—provides objects for working with the Network Analyst extension from within ArcMap. Requires ArcGIS Network Analyst extension.
- Schematic—implements the non user-interface functionality of the Schematics extension for ArcGIS. The Schematics extension is required to develop and deploy against objects in this library.
- SchematicUI—provides user interfaces to support objects contained in the Schematic library. The Schematics extension is required to develop and deploy against objects in this library.
- MaplexUI—provides user interfaces to support objects contained in the Maplex library.

Modifications and additions to the ArcGIS controls

The ArcGIS platform includes high-level developer controls that can be used to build or extend applications with ArcGIS functionality and a quality map user interface. At this release, some changes were made to the existing developer components within the Java and C++ APIs and a new control has been added.

GTK widgets—Along with the existing Motif widgets, the ArcGIS controls included with ArcGIS Engine are now also available to native C++ developers as GTK widgets. See 'Getting started with GTK programming' for more information.
Java visual components—A new set of visual beans is available and can be used to replace the visual components originally introduced in 9.0. The new beans extend JComponent, solve some threading problems exhibited in Java IDEs, and contain internal references to the original components. The new visual beans behave more predictably within IDEs.
Note: The components released with 9.0 have not been removed. Applications that use them will continue to function. If desired, refer to the document 'Migrating from 9.0 to 9.1' for simple steps to migrate your existing application to the newer beans.
Motif widgets—Some changes have been made to the Motif widgets released with version 9.0. Existing applications will continue to run; however, if recompilation is necessary 'Migrating ArcGIS Motif Controls from 9.0 to 9.1' provides the required steps.
LicenseControl—Use the LicenseControl to automatically perform license initialization within simple graphical user interface applications using the MapControl, PageLayoutControl, TOCControl, ToolbarControl, ReaderControl, SceneControl or GlobeControl. More information is included in the Controls Library Overview.

Add-ins and Developer Tools

The add-ins automate some of the tasks performed by the software engineer when developing with ArcObjects, as well as provide tools that make debugging code easier. ESRI provides add-ins for the Visual Basic 6 IDE and the Visual Studio .NET IDE. New for ArcGIS 9.1 are:

.NET Automatic References add-in—simplifies the addition of references to the ArcGIS 9 libraries.
VB6 and .NET License Initializer add-in—automatically generates and adds license initialization code to an ArcObjects project.