[programming] In ArcGIS, an object that manages and serves a GIS resource, such as a map or a locator. A server object is a high-level object that simplifies the programming model for doing certain operations and hides the fine-grained ArcObjects that do the work. Server objects also have SOAP interfaces, which makes it possible to expose server objects as Web services that can be consumed by clients across the Internet. At ArcGIS 9.3, there are seven types of server objects: MapServer, GeocodeServer, GeodataServer, GeometryServer, GlobeServer, GPServer, and ImageServer.