ArcGIS.com Beta Goes Live
May 24, 2010 20 Comments
Over the weekend ESRI pushed out a public release of the ArcGIS.com website (still in beta). They’ve brought along the data from ArcGIS Online (what there was) and have wrapped it around an absolutely beautiful website. It is a little light on content, but I’m sure at ArcGIS 10, ESRI expects all of us to start sharing our data as Layer Packages on ArcGIS.com.
ArcGIS.com is now live
Gallery
The Gallery page is fairly well laid out, but I’m not sure if it will scale when the billions of ESRI users start integrating this into their workflows.
The Gallery page of ArcGIS.com
You’ve got 3 basic sections of the Gallery; Maps, Web Apps and Mobile Apps. When you mouse over a map in the Maps section, you get an overview of the map and some very basic metadata on it. Pages appear at the bottom and while this works very well for the 2 pages that exist now, I’m sure it will get messy very quickly. But don’t worry, ESRI has a search!
Searching ArcGIS.com
“Gulf Oil” results in a ton of results across the whole ArcGIS.com. The search works well as long as there is never an oil spill in another gulf. There is no way I can see to say I only want results in the Gulf of Mexico and not the Persian Gulf. It’s the typical Google (though with pretty screenshots) search method that I’m just not sure works very well with spatial data. All these maps on ESRI’s ArcGIS.com have extents, why not use that for a search?
The next section of Gallery is Web Apps where users can register their own ArcGIS Server APIs websites. Before we get there there is a huge problem with the navigation of ArcGIS.com. You can’t generate URLs for many of the sections. Thus if you want to see the Web Apps section of ArcGIS.com, you’ll need to go to ArcGIS.com and navigate yourself. Enjoy…
Web Apps section of ArcGIS.com
Some of these you’ve seen for years, others are now. You can either roll your own on your own servers, or create a map on ArcGIS.com (which I’ll get into soon). Again, its got the same issues as the Maps section. Will it scale when the method of discovery doesn’t lend itself to maps? We’ll see.
Lastly is the Mobile Apps section which is essentially the same as the Web Apps, but with only Mobile Apps. It will be interesting to see if ESRI will allow Web and Mobile Apps that use ESRI Web Services or ArcGIS Server, but not their visualization APIs (for example using OpenLayers) into ArcGIS.com.
Map
Map allows you to visualize content in ArcGIS.com or on your own map web services. It isn’t ArcGIS Explorer Web, but appears to be a JavaScript subset of it.
ArcGIS.com Maps using OpenStreetMap basemap
Now I do like ArcGIS.com Maps very much. I think the folks at ESRI did a very good job with it and it is generally very intuitive. There is a huge problem with though though, zero support for open standards. Want to add an OGC web services (even one running on ArcGIS Server)? Can’t do it. I have to assume they’ll add this in soon, but until it happens ArcGIS.com Maps is just half baked. (this is also a problem with ArcGIS Explorer Web)
Open Standards? Not around here...
So anyway, assuming you live in a total ESRI world (I guess we do don’t we?) author you map in ArcGIS.com Map and save it. Then you can choose do you want to share with the world (using that Gallery stuff above) or with a small group (or keep it private). This brings us to the last section of ArcGIS.com
Groups
The groups section is where groups (get it?) can collaborate on their maps together. I’ve not set up a group yet, but browsing through the public ones I can see lots of them called “test”. As I’ve stated before above, you can see how the navigation becomes unusable after a couple pages have been added. No one in their right mind will browse these maps via this interface making discovery very difficult. Long tail need not apply at ArcGIS.com.
Yikes, 90 pages. Time to futz with the search engine.
Conclusions
So what do I think? ArcGIS.com is a very good start. It really looks and feels modern. Runs snappy and is quite intuitive. My problems with it are few, but to me their are just killers. No support for any open standards. As long as you use ArcGIS Server Services and Layer Packages, you can share. If you don’t have ArcGIS then this just isn’t going to be the place for you. Even if you use ArcGIS Server and only share WMS services, you can’t partake in ESRI’s ArcGIS.com.
The other issue I have with it is that I don’t think the interface scales well. If we are all going to be resorting to using search to find anything, it makes it very difficult to just discover things. A perfect example is how I see people using Google Earth with the Wikipedia layer on. They just navigate the globe discovering content on a map.
Lastly I have one huge plea to ESRI. PLEASE ADD AN UPTIME INDICATOR TO WEB AND MOBILE APPS! We can’t use any of these services if we don’t know how often they are down. Star ratings are useless so feel free to drop that right now and do something like FGDC does. Reliability lends credibility and I can’t imagine ESRI spending all this money on ArcGIS.com only to see it fail like GeographyNetwork.
That said, ArcGIS.com is a good start and could become the premier method of visualizing geo-content on the web. I’m not sure the sharing aspect will gain much traction since it doesn’t support open standards, but ArcGIS.com Maps will be well used by just about everyone.
About James Fee
FYI – This shows great promise, but layer packages (LP) are not supported “at this time”
The lack of this “important” feature should be more prominent.
? I’m able to upload Layer Packages just fine (.lpk). Seems to work well.
Uploading layer packages to “my content” works, but they cannot be added to a base map. See second note under “Adding Layers” at http://www.arcgis.com/help/content/webmaps/create_wm.htm
I also discovered this lack of layer package support after excitedly uploading a file or two this morning. Created a new online map and went to add data from the My Content directory…nada. I’ll accept this as part and parcel of the “beta” tag at this juncture.
I wouldn’t have expected that sort of functionality (just yet). That would mean starting up services on the fly, ArcGIS Server instances getting spun up as needed, GDBs, etc. If it was there I wouldn’t expect it for free either.
A simple page explaining what functionality is or is not available would have saved many people a lot of grief wondering, “what am I doing wrong?”
Beta granted, but this gives a bad impression of the service when all documentation pages (but one?) and blogs (like Fee’s excellent blog) state layer packages will work.
I’m confused Bruce L. I can upload layer packages. Are you talking about something else?
James – unable to reply to your comment, too many levels deep? I’ll try this:
James Fee: I’m confused Bruce L. I can upload layer packages. Are you talking about something else?
Bruce L: See my first reply to Dre
Layer packages created from SDE only create the layer file. The data’s not extracted, which makes layer packages for enterprise deployments kinda useless.
I thought Layer Packages converted SDE into FGDB? Same with CAD and other types.
Was this not true (I’d test, but I dont have SDE)?
See tip box number #2 – http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?TopicName=Saving_a_layer_to_disk
“If your data source for the map layer is an ArcSDE geodatabase, the data will be referenced in the layer package. It will not be extracted and saved in the layer package.”
Dear local, state and federal governments;
There is nothing here for you, please move along and don’t use this closed proprietary service.
May open standards be in your future.
Thanks,
Lefty
considering the feds have an ELA with ESRI, open standards mean little to them.
This poo poohing of open standards is pretty hilarious. AGS is de facto standard.
i’m impressed that you can configure internal sources with this service. I just wish there was more granularity to the sharing and more obsfucation of the service properties for security reasons.
In fact, publishing open access to data feeds is a mandated Federal requirement, although you wouldn’t know it from the actual practice.
ESRI does all it can to stifle and obfuscate access to its services by anything other than another ESRI solution. For them, it’s business.
Most operational Feds don’t have the resources to hold the line when ESRI senses they’re not getting their way…it can be a career-limiting move to ‘hold up a project’ because you’re advocating OGC and ESRI doesn’t want to play. The kind folks from ESRI will walk right over your GS14 back and go to the SES that manages your department to get your obfuscatory self reassigned. And if you think this doesn’t happen, you clearly don’t understand the mapping community inside the Federal space.
Time and again the IT world has demonstrated that OPEN standards mean wider, deeper, and more engaged adoption in user communities. HTML anyone?
heh, actually I find that pretty funny…..but “it’s just biz’ness”
James;
That is a very good point about the uptime measure; that is a area we tend to not think about in these days of clouds/clusters and HA systems. When your business is driven by availability the number of users that find your service ‘cool’ isn’t going to be as valuable as the users that need your service to be up.
Overall the site looks like a nice start, but it will take some time to see if this can have a future at replacing bigger dedicated systems.
Never ceases to amaze me that the FGDC runs an actually-useful service. A nice, simple interface with real value. Who’d have thought?
As for access to open services…don’t hold your breath. The ESRI community doesn’t have time for such frivolous and irrelevant ideas like STANDARDS. They’re doing ‘real’ work with ‘real’ systems out of Redlands; none of this silly openness and interoperability for them.
Imagine, someone might actually connect a non-ESRI system to one of their groups!
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pretty handy and useful link
thank you a lot
cheers Nick
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