Consumer ArcGIS – “you know, for the masses”
July 17, 2006 26 Comments
People seem to have really hit on this GIS for the masses and wondering why there is no real ESRI solution below ArcView. We all know there isn’t, but ESRI has given developers the tools to create one. Frankly I’m am amazed that no one has taken ArcGIS Engine and created their own “ArcView Lite”. Using the runtime you can pretty much do what probably 90% of people usually do with an ArcView license (you know, the masses).
Heck .NET or Java (I say Java, but I don’t know much about how good Java support is for Engine) take your pick.
About James Fee
I remember learning about this at BCIT in the GIS Program (April 2005). It sounds like one could do some interesting things with it. I could see a keen GIS programmer making up one app for municipal mapping purposes or a general cartography app.
“Frankly I’m am amazed that no one has taken ArcGIS Engine and created their own “ArcView Liteâ€.”
Probably because the cost/benefit of developing one would be prohibitive without a lot of press for it. Unless of course, ESRI or some other large organization promoted it….
But wouldn’t Manifold or QGIS fit the mold for “ArcView Lite”? James, is there any on-line articles out there that compare entry-level GIS programs?
Why should the masses waste time and money with ArcGIS and time with half-baked open source software, when you can buy Maptitude for $500?
Maptitude? LMAO, sure if you want to use shapefiles, but you can’t edit geodatabases (personal or sde) so it is irrelevant. Plus who wants to go through the hassle of getting IT to approve Maptitude. I’m sure that would only take a year.
I’ve heard Manifold can read PGDB, but again you still have to get the IT to approve it and at this point it isn’t worth it. At least an ESRI based system is already “grandfathered” into our systems.
What are you talking about? You can edit Maptitude geographic files very easily. It is also a simple one-step procedure to export to a shapefile. I do it all the time.
You must be a “GIS professional” rather than one of the 98% (like me) who don’t need an IT deparment to approve something.
I believe the main reason is that licensing the engine is prohibitively expensive for a “GIS for the masses” approach. Although I personally haven’t figured out all the license scheming that happens with all the ESRI stuff. If I want to put GIS on every person’s desktop, I am going to get a lot further with Free/Open software than anything that requires several hundred dollars per seat…
“You can edit Maptitude geographic files very easily. It is also a simple one-step procedure to export to a shapefile. I do it all the time.”
LMAO, so I gotta have that hassle? Why bother?
“You must be a “GIS professional†rather than one of the 98% (like me) who don’t need an IT deparment to approve something.”
WTF? How does being a professional have anything to do with your company policy on software. Even our CEO can’t install software on his computer with the IT folks approving it. Sound policy that keeps kooks such as yourself from installing crap such as Maptopia or whatever its called.
If “Mapitube” can’t work with simple standards such as geodatabases, then it is dead on arrival.
@Andrew
You might be right except that I’m thinking of something that might allow editing of geodatabases. I’m not sure any existing software other than ESRI allows this.
We can get into the discussion about ESRI geodatabases being closed or proprietary later and I won’t argue with either account, but I don’t see any solution other than the ArcGIS Engine that has support for existing “ESRI Standards”.
Obviously if you only work with shapefiles and GeoTiffs, etc you’d have so many more choices. But locked into the ESRI pyramid limits you somewhat. I know as far as DoD is concerned, you’d have a better chance of turning lead into gold than getting an open source GIS product approved for the desktop. Believe me I’ve tried (well at least the second part, I’ve never tried to turn lead in to gold).
Maptitude is pretty lame compared to some of the other non-ESRI choices out there. I prefer Manifold, but our city won’t let us install anything but ESRI products so my personal choice is moot.
Though I am running QGIS on my thumb drive like James showed in his posts so that is something.
Okay, Critter I will bow out. I guess I misunderstood … I thought this thread was referencing “GIS for the masses” — not obscure enterprise level IT stuff that the masses don’t need to use.
On further reflection, Google Earth is “GIS for the masses”.
But if you want desktop GIS software that will allow you to conduct more sophisticated spatial analyses, Maptitude is a great low-cost solution. Manifold probably is too, but I’ve never tried it.
By the way, I do not work for Caliper (maker of Maptitude).
I need to get a new job. I’m not a GIS pro by any means, but my IT staff won’t let me install anything but ESRI software (actually we are on AV3.3). We can’t afford to move to ArcGIS, but our IT folk won’t let us use anything more. They also have said we can’t use GE unless we pay the $400 for a commercial license. It isn’t much but I can’t afford ESRI maintenance let alone $400 a year for GE Pro.
What is masses? If its home use then I’m sure an ESRI solution isn’t the answer nor is it marketed as one. I didn’t get the feeling that James was talking about consumer GIS, just the masses at the bottom of the ESRI pyramid. I could be wrong but that is how I read his post.
@AlbertW
Yes, I was talking about the vertical ESRI pyramid. I don’t see anything other than ESRI-based solutions breaking into that marketplace as at least in my experience 100% compatibility is needed. In fact without ESRI or ArcGIS in the solution, most won’t even let us present solutions. We had a hard enough time with MapObjects convincing people that it was an ESRI based solution.
For consumers, there is no real choice yet. GE or World Wind aren’t robust enough and the open source solutions aren’t polished enough. I’ve not see anything yet in the $69-$99 range that I’d say is consumer GIS and I’m not sure we’ll ever see such a product. Adobe was able to get Photoshop to the masses with Adobe Photoshop Elements and if ESRI was able to do the same thing with ArcView, maybe that would be a solution. But I can’t see how you’d repackage a $1,500 application down to the consumer range. Heck you can’t even do that with ArcGIS Engine.
Are we talking about low cost enterprise GIS or consumer GIS here? I thought it was the latter. To me, “consumer” = personal use.
A consumer GIS does not need to be able to connect to ArcSDE, or understand all the ESRI standards. Nor does it require approval from IT to install it.
I do use Manifold. It runs rings around ArcView for personal use. It’s not sub-USD100, but at USD295 it is excellent value.
I think the price of the ArcGIS Engine runtime is the problem, it’s just too expensive to build a “Lite” version that is targeted at the masses (e.g. you’ll never get to the $69-$99 range).
IMO, ESRI priced this for “targeted” applications and kept it just high enough to prevent people from doing what you are suggesting. I doubt they want a cheap version of ArcMap that is “good enough” for most people.
FWIW, we still haven’t ported our desktop app from MapObjects but I did start porting the majority of the UI dialogs you would need for an “ArcMap Lite”, maybe we’ll be able to do something with them in the future (http://www.spatialdatalogic.com/cs/blogs/brian_flood/archive/2005/04/19/17.aspx)
cheers
brian
Thanks, Andrew.
I hope to try Manifold at some point. For most consumer/small business purposes, Maptitude also runs rings around ArcView 3.x and ArcGIS. It is good to know I am not the only “kook” out there.
To be fair, I occasionally use Arcviw 3.x as a utility. For example, it is faster and easier to reproject shapefiles in some cases with ArcView, rather than Maptitude.
Take the time to learn GRASS, QGIS, GDAL, Mapserver, and PostGIS. You will never need a commercial GIS for 99% of that things that would be doing with this toolset. Good cartographic output is another matter however… GMT may be the best way to go there.
James,
I am pretty sure Manifold (.net) allows editing of geobases. From the demos and user comments, it seems to rock the scene.
Since my wife won’t actually let me spend money, I have spent weeks fiddling around with setting up GRASS on WinXP and have thrown in the towel. Quantum GIS (QGIS) which has a GRASS plugin worked like “that” . SAGA GIS looks interesting too.
Great blog.
@Samual
It does allow editing of personal geodatabases. When I wrote the article I was talking about corporate masses who have SDE geodatabases. From a consumer level you are totally right, Manifold is about the closest thing out there.
I’m curious to know what feature set people would people like to see in an “mass market” GIS. In my mind there isn’t much demand for a ArcView Lite type of product. The mass market simply doesn’t want to do “GIS” work and therefore don’t need a GIS application. Start talking about buffers, proximity analysis, intersects and most people start to tune out. Many cheaper / free tools can do this work besides ArcMap and I believe the market is well served by the current products available. This market may grow a little in the near future, but it’s not the true bottom of the pyramid so to speak.
The true mass market users are currently the GE and WW users. WW (and eventually ArcExplorer) allow devlopers to extend the application to specific tasks. This is where you will see huge growth. Companies providing GIS type services for specific tasks. For example send your list of crime locations and types we will analyize it and send back a KML with images showing crime hot spots by type and correlations against cenus data. Provide this as a free service for anything less than 100 points, charge for anything more than that. That is your true GIS application for the masses.
I don’t know CAM, we pay for way too many ArcView licenses at our city. I’d rather see the money saved with a cheaper ArcView Lite. I think ESRI wants us to migrate to ArcGIS Server, but our users want clients.
City: Don’t get me wrong if I ran ESRI I would make several changes (James: “If I Ran ESRI..” would make a great seperate blog posting). The first of which would be to make ArcView free for personal / Non – profit use and cheap (sub $250) for corporate use.
I didn’t say there would be no demand for thick clients, just that the ‘true’ bottom of the pyramid users are not these folks. I work for a large company and we have a large group of ArcMap users for whom ArcMap is serious overkill. Could we use an ArcView light? Sure, but the number of users is trivial compared to the number of people that could make use of a GIS type service via the web or simple end client (GE / WW / AE).
I don’t think the “masses” require a lot of typical GIS functionality. You can also see that from the popularity of the Google Maps – not much GIS, but enough for many applications that need to show local data on a map.
I’ve done projects building map-based tools for governmental organisations – most turn out to be map viewers with a little extra functions to add points, annotations etc to the map that the tool than uses for other things. Typically GIS functionality like data analysis and geoprocessing is done in the preparation of the tool, not by the users of the tool itself. We worked with MapObjects LT, so our customers could give the tool away for free.
Now you would choose a website for those reasons – pay once for the development of it, accessible by everyone. If ArcGIS Explorer is indeed a free desktop tool for access to ArcGIS Server, that would be a likely combination for a “GIS for the masses” type of application, with all heavy stuff on the servers.
Samuel is right.
Viva Grass! Man, why don’t you get rid of Windows? Linux kicks ass. Open source programmes are the way forward.
Looking forward to trying our Grass, QGIS, etc on a linux box. I have already tried and used Manifold, and it seems pretty solid to me.
I’m not a casual GIS user, though. I grew up with PAMAP (older Canadian GIS), migrated to ESRI products, and have been looking for a product I can afford on my own.
For me, tho I have worked for larger organisations in the past, I still do much of my work at home office, and often take on smaller contracts. Affordability of license is critical, and ESRI products are just way, way too expensive for me.
I’d recommend Manifold.
It’s still going through some rapid development, but the core of it seem stable enough.
It can produce decent enough *looking* maps too, though if I want something high-end, I’ll still export maps as layers to a high-end graphic design program like Corel Draw, or Illustrator.
IMHO, anyway.
Regards,
Russell from Canada
Hy all,
perhaps you should have a look onto “MapKey” of IP SYSCON. This is a kind of ArcView light based on ArcGIS Engine. It’s a pretty new produkt, the second stage of expansion (V9.1) has just been finished; the last main stage of expansion (V9.2) is under way.
MapKey is fully integrated in ArcGIS Product Family and in the next Version provides nearly all important functions of ArcView GIS 3 are included (Mapping and layouts, editing, GIS-analysis).
Of course it is extendable and you can create your own extensions or tools for MapKey.
Shurely it’s not a lowest cost “GIS for the masses” (alone because of the cost for ArcGIS Engine Runtime). But I think it is a real alternative for ArcView GIS 3 Users to move to a modern produkt – and for other GIS Users, for whom ArcView 9 is too much.
You can stop wondering why no one takes ArcGIS Engine to create ArcView Light: we did.
If you want to learn more, have a look onto at
http://www.ipsyscon.de/fileadmin/dokumente/pdf/translations/mapkey_engl.pdf
If you are interested to learn more about MapKey, please contact our sales manager for MapKey Steffen Freiberg :
freiberg@ipsyscon.de
Regards,
Natalie
I would just like to mention that Maptitude 5.0 does support personal geodatabases and the next versions of our mapping software will include direct editing capabilities for many non-caliper formats. Please see http://www.caliper.com for further information.
Check out this app that wraps around Arcreader…..
http://www.mapsync.com/GeoSyncXG/index.htm