ArcGIS Server 9.1 and ASP .Net

I have been taking classes to learn ArcGIS from ESRI. It is a very interesting and exciting technology, but is unfortunately stagnant due to ESRI's overwhelmingly large market share in the GIS software field. It is analogous to Microsoft's (MS) dominant position in the 90's that introduced problems in Windows 95 and Win 98. Since Win 95/98 had to be backwards compatible, MS was constrained to what they could do. Win 95/98 was infamous for crashing and presenting the blue screen of death. ArcGIS 9.1 Desktop suffers from the same problems. It crashes a lot, is arduous to install, and supports way too many anachronistic GIS file types. I say all of this because it is the root of the problem with ArcGIS 9.1 Server.

ArcGIS 9.1 Server is built on top of ArcObjects and ArcObjects are built with COM objects. This means .Net developers must interact with COM objects in their ArcGIS 9.1 Server applications. This, of course, introduces the dreaded InterOp assembly and leads to very messy coding with many hacks. While unfortunate, ESRI has no real incentive to upgrade ArcObjects to .Net because there is no one else to turn to for GIS web technology. Either you play the ESRI game or you don't play at all.