ArcGIS Engine

What is it?

The ESRI product "ArcGIS Engine" is a set of libraries that can be used by GIS application developers to create either add-ons for other ESRI products or free-standing applications.

I think of it as ArcObjects with some additional licensing options.

To deploy an ArcGIS Engine - based application to a machine that does not have ArcGIS Desktop installed on it you include the ArcGIS Engine Runtime in the deployment. There is a $500/seat license for the Runtime; if they already have ArcGIS Desktop on the target machine, you avoid this separate fee.

There are also extensions for the runtime corresponding to the ArcGIS Desktop extensions. These include Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst, Network Analyst, and Geostatistical Analyst. I am not sure of the cost of the licensing for the extensions.

Alternatives

To avoid a per-seat license fee you could use ArcReader.

On Ubuntu Linux

To install 9.3.1 on Ubuntu

1. Build CentOS 5 virtual machine and install 9.3 there; including SDK's.
2. Install update to 9.3.1
3. Copy the files to Ubuntu
4. Create an ESRI.properties.`hostname` file from the one created on the VM
5. Install csh libg2c0
6. Create a script that mimics 'arch' (see below)
7. cd arcgis
8. run authorizeSoftware script

Create the /etc/ld.so.conf.d/arcgis file

arch script

cat > ~/bin/arch
echo i686
exit 0
chmod +x ~/bin/arch