Depreciation plans for ArcGIS 9.3.1 and 9.4

From the James Fee GIS Blog, a great source to GIS & ESRI info and news, any serious GIS user should check it out.

ESRI released a roadmap of its technologies and platforms to abandon in the next releases of ESRI ArcGIS platform, it includes:

The ArcGIS 9.3.1 Platform (all of the ArcGIS products) is the last version to support:

• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (it is very simple to move from VS2005 to VS2008 and to VS2010)
• Internet Explorer 6 (while it is still used ... it should be phased out of support lifecycles)

ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• Crystal Report Wizard, a new reporting engine is used that should be more robust and have better features and performance.
• The Survey Editor Component and Survey Dataset within the Survey Analyst (I don't know what's left from the Survey Analyst)
• CASE tools and the Import Schema Wizard (that means goodbye for Microsoft Visio)
• Microsoft Visual Basic 6 (time to leave such ancient platform)
• Sun Solaris 9 for ArcReader and ArcGIS Engine (This keeps only Solaris 10/Linux/Microsoft Windows Platform)

ArcInfo Workstation 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• IBM AIX (the only remaining platforms are Microsoft Windows and Sun Solaris)

ArcIMS 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• ArcMap Server Extension to ArcIMS
• ArcIMS Route server extension
• IBM AIX
• HP-UX (the only remaining platforms are Microsoft Windows, Linux and Sun Solaris)

ArcSDE 9.3.1 (part of ArcGIS Server) is the last version to support:

• 32-bit Informix on the AIX and Solaris platforms
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• HP-UX on the PA-RISC processor (support for ArcSDE technology on HP-UX on the Itanium processor is continued)
• PostgreSQL on Red Hat 4 (support for newer version of Red Hat Linux is continued)
• Oracle 9i
• Server-side geocoding in ArcSDE (ArcGIS Server geocode services have replaced the server-side geocoding functionality in ArcSDE)

ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• Enterprise Application Developer Framework (EADF) for ArcGIS Server Enterprise Java release (EADF provided out-of-the box Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) that were ready to use and deploy across supported J2EE 1.4 application servers. Users can still take advantage of EJBs by following patterns highlighting the ArcGIS Java Web Services Toolkit (AgsJWS) and EJB3)
• Sun Solaris 9 (with the exception of the ArcSDE technology component)

ArcGIS Mobile 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• Windows CE .NET platform (including Windows CE .NET 4.2 and 5.0)

The ArcGIS 9.4 Platform (all of the ArcGIS products) is the last version to support:

• Sun Solaris (with the exception of the ArcSDE technology component)

ArcGIS Desktop 9.4 will be the last version to support:

• Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) (as Microsoft no longer promotes or updates VBA)

ArcInfo Workstation 9.4:

• ArcInfo Workstation will be decoupled from ArcGIS Desktop 9.4
• Windows 7 as the last expected Windows platform upgrade
• Support for connecting to ArcSDE

ArcIMS 9.4 is the last version to support:

• ArcIMS Metadata Server (replacing it with search technology in the ArcGIS Geoportal Extension 9.3.1, and in ArcGIS Server 9.4)

For the next major release after ArcGIS 9.4 (maybe 9.5 or 10.0):

• The last planned release for ArcInfo Workstation on Windows (which will be the last supported platforms)
• The last planned release for ArcIMS on Windows and Linux (which will be the last supported platforms)