Does ArcGIS Pro Engine similar ArcGIS Engine (a standalone) exists ?

[Ravichandran_M_Kaushika]

dear Readers,

Good afternoon.  Thank you for taking the time to read through my question.

Using ArcGIS Engine, we had developed an enterprise standalone spatial application to serve our producers nationwide.  It is time to start planning for the future.

Right now, we are wondering whether to create an Add-in application with many tab ribbons to accommodates features and functions or to explore whether such an entity like ArcGIS (ArcMap/ArcInfo) engine exists in the ArcGIS Pro world?

There could be a way to create a standalone application using ArcGIS Pro SDK . I saw that CoreHost application option in the SDK and found that it is a console application.

Any thoughts or guidance would be great.

thanks and regards

Ravi Kaushika.

[Wolf · Accepted solution]

The ArcGIS Pro SDK provides four main extensibility patterns: ArcGIS Pro Module Add-in, ArcGIS Pro Managed Configuration, ArcGIS Pro CoreHost Application, and ArcGIS Pro Plug-in Datasource.
An add-in (ArcGIS Pro Module Add-in) allows the customization of the ArcGIS Pro UI through changes to the Tab / Ribbon UI, Buttons, Tools, Dockpane, etc. 

An ArcGIS Pro Managed Configuration includes all functionality of an add-in plus you can customize the ArcGIS Pro start page, splash screen, and it allows you to fully customize the Ribbon/Tab UI to streamline workflows.

An ArcGIS Pro CoreHost Application is a standalone console application that only allows work with the Geodatabase and Geometry classes.  There is no GUI for maps.

The “ArcGIS Pro Plugin DataSource” extensibility pattern is used to integrate unsupported / custom data formats so that they can be viewed and mapped with ArcGIS Pro.

So to answer your question there is no direct replacement for ArcEngine applications with the ArcGIS Pro SDK, the closest ArcGIS Pro SDK extensibility pattern would be a Managed Configuration.   In general developers who had ArcEngine standalone applications are now looking at ArcGIS Runtime (ArcGIS Runtime API for .NET | ArcGIS Developers)

To implement one of these patterns you can use the Visual Studio 2022 project 

[Ravichandran_M_Kaushika]

@Wolf ,

Good afternoon. Thank you for a detailed explanation of the different features available at our disposal.

Our existing application brings up a splash screen letting the users decide whether they would like to Open ArcMap or the 'tailored' application.

Based on your suggestions, we will use Pro Managed configuration and that might address their concerns without me having to worry about whether there is an equivalent of ArcGIS Engine in the ArcGIS Pro world.

thank you and have a good day.

regards,

Ravi.