Evaluating The ArcGIS API Evaluator

Last week the ArcGIS Development Team released a new .NET utility called the ArcGIS API Evaluator. This is nice little utility that allows you scan through your .NET code base and generate API usage statistics which in turn can be uploaded to ESRI.

Now a few might ask why would I need to do this? Well there are some valid use cases.

One of the most important features of the ArcGIS API Evaluator is that it allows you to send your API usage statistics and information through to the ArcGIS Development Team. We have already seen something similar to this with the new ArcGIS 9.3 Error Reporting. With users sending in crash reports directly through to the development teams, more bugs can be easily evaluated and fixed. ArcGIS 9.3 Service Pack 1 which is coming soon is already showing us that this new feature is working.

For the development community the ArcGIS API Evaluator will allow the ArcGIS Development Team to gain a better understanding on how customers are making use of the API’s which in turn will allow them to make focused improvements and decisions of future development.

I ran the ArcGIS API Evaluator against a ArcGIS 9.2 project that I had.

It was very interesting see the number of calls made in the relevant areas. You then have the option to upload this information to the ArcGIS Development Team.

For those wanting to know exactly what is uploaded, here’s a list:

• Count of method and property calls to ESRI APIs
• List of implemented ESRI base classes and interfaces
• Assembly names
• Contact details (if supplied)

I think this is a great little utility which has so many different uses. From being able to determine API usage statistics through to determining what licensing would be required to run your application through to detecting .NET version dependencies, the ArcGIS API Evaluator should not only help the ArcGIS Development Team but also a number of users in the development community.

A full write up about this neat utility can be found here: http://blogs.esri.com/dev/…. I encourage users to run this tool against your projects and send some of those statistics through to ESRI.

The ArcGIS API Evaluator can be download here: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisengine/…