Newbie questions about pyramids, also ArcGIS 9.3 vs 10

[TimothieBiggs]

I have watched the free seminar and have been digging around the help pages and tutorials and I have the following questions...

If I have a GRID file with pyramids do the pyramids get utilized in Image Server or do we need to recreate them from scratch with Image Server?

Can I put a GRID created in ArcGIS 10 into Image Server 9.3?

Is there an Image Server 10? Or does it stop at 9.3?

When we upgrade to ArcGIS 10 Desktop / Server, if we haven't purchased the ArcGIS Server Image extension can we still work with Image Server 9.3?

Thanks
Tim

[GordonSumerling]

Tim,

At 9.3.1 ArcGIS Image Server is a seperate Standalone Server product that ArcGIS Server can be linked to, to serve image services. It reads most standard image formats. When creating the image services it is optimzed to take advantage of the internal pyramids in an image. Whether this is GRID format, tiff, MrSID etc does not matter. If the pyramids exist then the product can be configured to use these.

At V10.0 Image Server still exists but for mainatenance clients only. It dissappears at completely at 10.1. At 10.0 we have the ArcGIS  Image Extension which is an extension to ArcGIS Server. With ArcEditor/info you create mosaic data sets in the geodatabase and the ArcGIS Server Image Extension serves these. The Mosaics are basically the same technology that existed in Image Server but the core functionality has been move to the Geodatabase.

The question then comes how do I migrate a 9.3.1 Image Service to a Mosaic at version 10. Esri have written a very good help file on this migration path: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//009t000001vt000000. I have walked many clients through this process.

Finally you ask if an image service created in 10.0 is viewable in 9.3.1. Well the answer is yes as the 9.3.1 can consume the image services.
In V10.0 though if you create tiff files you will not be able to read these as these are Big tiff format. Support was only introduced at 10.0

Hope this Helps

[TimothieBiggs]

Thanks for replying Gordon. Things are a little clearer - but I have a few follow up questions for clarification which I am posting in a new thread.