We need a “cash for clunkers” program to rid us of old busted web GIS

September 22, 2009 33 Comments

A day doesn’t go by were I don’t run into it.  You know what I’m talking about, some busted old ArcIMS or MapGuide website that is the only thing between me and getting what I need out of data.  Clearly new technology isn’t going to just help these websites get upgraded on their own.  No, clearly we need some stimulus money to help foster some new open, standards based, http goodness in our lives.

What I would like the Obama administration to do is start “Cash for ArcIMS” and a “Cash for MapGuide” programs to rid us of these abominations.  It is our patriotic duty to replace these old antiquated web technologies with some fine ArcGIS Server, GeoServer, MapGuide Open Source or many of the other great web GIS products out there.

It is time to stand up and take charge. Sing along men!

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SOAP is for cleaning…

March 6, 2009 13 Comments

Of course this is not surprising in the least bit, but Google is abandoning their SOAP API to focus on their RESTful APIs.  Most developers, myself included, prefer working with RESTful services and I’m interested in seeing if other companies will start “retiring” their SOAP APIs for their newer RESTful ones.  ESRI, MapGuide, and GeoServer are all great RESTful implementations, but they are still young and immature.  Just looking at the ESRI ArcGIS Server Mashup Challenge submissions, you can see the sheer number of REST API, JSAPI, Flex API projects and the lack of Web ADF projects.  As these RESTful APIs get more mature, it is clear that ESRI SOAP APIs are destined to follow Google’s SOAP APIs into depreciation.

Even John Brown looked at ESRIs RESTful API for salvation.

Even John Brown looked at ESRI's RESTful API for salvation.

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The MapGuide REST Extension

January 31, 2009 7 Comments

ESRI has a REST API, GeoServer is going to have one, now MapGuide might get its own RESTful service.  The City of Nanaimo smartly realized that using a RESTful service was a much better way to get data to the public than a traditional WxS or ArcIMS service (take note of that NSDI 2.0 folks).  Jason Birch has all the details including the URLs to explore the service.  I like how Google has already crawled their service and it is discoverable via Google Search.  Hopefully Jason gets some great feedback and this Nanaimo project can make it into the MapGuide trunk.  Their work is impressive and the results speak for themselves.

Getting RESTful in Namino, BC

Getting RESTful in Nanaimo, BC

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