WMS Services in ArcGIS Explorer
June 20, 2006 16 Comments
Someone has been bugging me about WMS services in ArcGIS Explorer and how well the are working. Well in the latest beta they work wonderful. I’m very impressed with how well they are working. Specifically they asked about the Microsoft Terraserver WMS service and I figured a screen capture might work best to show how its working. (click image for larger view)
About James Fee
any details on support for WMS legends in ArcGIS Explorer?
I don’t have a WMS service with a legend set up. Do you have one I can test?
Hey James, has ESRI set you free to blog about beta software? Just curious.
Well I’m not posting about anything that ESRI hasn’t already released into the wild.
Man that is sweet…
How does it do adding other data? I know I’ve read it has support for KML/KMZ, shapefiles, geodatabases, ArcIMS/ArcGIS Server and MS Excel.
I wish I had access to it.
So AGX does a great job of handling the WMS service? That is great news from my perspective I’ll tell you that. Wish I heard more of this from ESRI.
The 3D globe works the same at Google Earth but I can add my own datasets? How do I get on this beta?
The beta is closed right now. I’m sure ESRI is really trying to get it out ASAP. I don’t know much more beyond what was said at Where 2.0 and other places by Jack Dangermond.
Rumor has it that AEX *won’t* be supporting shapefiles(!).
I think you will have to push shapefiles into kml, then AEX can read it…?
Shapefile support is on the list. I know some betas have dropped shapefile support from time to time.
what else can it do? I see mention of a developer kit being .NET. When will people have public access to this?
Do you have any KML/KMZ examples you can post?
How does it save maps? I assume by default it doesn’t use KML. Is this save file XML? Can we modify create it on our own?
Albert, AGX saves out “NMF” files which are XML files describing the saved view. I can’t go into the structure of them as the beta is still closed and I don’t think ESRI has ever documented them before.
Anyway since this is a beta, I’m sure the structure will change.
As for creating them on your own I’m sure it is possible since they are just XML documents, but I’m not sure why you’d want to as a KML will probably do a better job and be more portable. Time will tell what plans ESRI has for these NMF files beyond just a save format.
The analogy right now I’d use is sure you could create an ArcView 3.x apr file on your own, but why would you want to?
As far as saving maps, it would be really nice if ESRI would support the OGC:WMC specification, which allows for interoperable ‘bookmarks’.