The ArcGIS Engine is an ArcGIS

ArcGIS

ArcGIS is a suite consisting of a group of geographic information system software products produced by Esri.ArcGIS is a system for working with maps and geographic information...

 software engine, a developer product for creating custom GIS desktop applications.

ArcGIS Engine provides application programming interface

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

s (APIs) for COM, .NET

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...

, Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

, and C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 for the Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms. The APIs include documentation and a series of high-level visual components to ease building ArcGIS applications.

Contents

ArcGIS Engine includes the core set of components, ArcObjects

ArcObjects

ArcObjects is a development environment of the ArcGIS family of applications. Using Visual Basic for Applications, it allows developers to extend these applications.-External links:**...

, from which ArcGIS Desktop products are built. With ArcGIS Engine one can build stand-alone applications or extend existing applications for both GIS and non-GIS users. The ArcGIS Engine distribution additionally includes utilities, samples, and documentation.