[5] As of June 2012[update] with the release of 10.1, Esri sells ArcSDE as a component of ArcGIS Server - part of the ArcGIS family of software products which integrates geographic-information query, mapping, spatial analysis, and editing within a multi-user enterprise DBMS environment.
ArcSDE enables organizations to move from a traditional approach — managing separate collections of geographic data files — to an integrated environment in which one can manage spatial data as a continuous database: accessible to the entire organization simultaneously and easily publishable on the Web.
ArcSDE allows one to manage spatial data in any of four commercial databases (IBM Db2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle).
While traditional RDBMS software keeps track of the tables and records contained in the database, ArcSDE pushes the relational model higher so that client software can manage geographic data - which comprise several tables - seamlessly.
The GIS environment routes all connections to the database through the ArcSDE middleware, which manages the storing and retrieval of data.