Link – ArcWeb Public Services – Part 0.3: Something almost usable
Well, after messing around last night and at lunch today, I have a fairly functional mashup using ESRI’s ArcWeb Public Services and PHP.
It’s pretty basic, with simple pan and zoom functionality, and a couple of point layers that you can turn on and off.
Considering you pretty much have to do everything yourself, Walt’s first effort is impressive. Great effort!
Take a look at his mashup here.
Links – Making an ArcWeb Mashup and A simple ArcWeb AJAX map control in PHP
Reading various news articles about mapping around the web it seems that there is a lot of excitement about what are called ‘mashups’. I have not been able to find a formal definition of this but it seems that this is basically when some sort of useful data is ‘mashed’ on top of some mapping service like Google. This most often seems to be point data like locations of bloggers, or events, etc. but sometimes it’s things like images, etc.
Andrea gets into a detailed description of how to create your own ArcWeb mashup using Perl. Besides this he also posted an article on how to create a very simple AJAX map control to stick right on your website. Someone at ESRI should like directly to Andrea’s blog from the Public AWS page so people can see this stuff.
Link – ArcWeb Public Services – Part 0.1
There are several things I still need to figure out, like how to zoom and pan, but my first impressions are pretty positive. I was able to take the data I used for my Google Maps sample project and use it in my ArcWeb sample without too much trouble. As Andrea did, I’m using a simple text file, but will likely end up using a MySQL database for my location data. It seems that not all the map data advertised on ESRI’s sales site is available right now, but my understanding from the FAQs is that more will be available later.
Looks like people are finally starting to create mashups using Public ArcWeb Services. Walt has made some headway putting points on his map and is now starting to look at creating some more functionality (pan/zoom/etc). I’m sure Walt’s been using it, but anyone who wants to learn more about ArcWeb can take a look at the ArcWeb Online Help or check out the ESRI Support Forums.
Walt’s ArcWeb demo is located here. Compare this to his previous Google Maps efforts.
Here’s a quick and dirty comparison of ESRI’s ArcWeb Public Services and the Google Maps API. Both are free to use and offer developers a way to display geographic data via the Web.
Walt has a nice quick look at the features of both ArcWeb Services and the Google Maps API. In response to Walt’s comment:
Anyone with space on a cheap shared host can use Google’s API, but without SOAP services it’s difficult to use ESRI’s product.
He should have a look at Andrea Rosso’s blog where he shows you how to use PHP and Perl with ArcWeb Services and Sean Gillies’s post on using Python with ArcWeb Services. Of course it is still SOAP, but almost any website hosting service gives you access to Perl, PHP or Python.
Link – Making an ArcWeb Mashup
Andrea’s been really busy over the past few days posting tons of code on how to use ArcWeb Services with Perl, PHP and now he’s posted some code on how to create a simple ArcWeb mashup. He used Perl as most hosting companies support it by default, and you can check out the result here. Don’t forget the online help for ArcWeb is available so you can learn more about what data sources you can use with Public ArcWeb Services.
Yesterday we saw Andrea post about using ArcWeb Services with PHP and now today we have two great posts about using ArcWeb with Perl and Python. First Andrea Rosso again has a great article with code on using Perl to fetch ArcWeb images. I’ve never really worked with Perl other than messing around with Movable Type (the CMS that I use with this blog), but the code is pretty strait forward and my hosting company already has the Perl SOAP modules installed. Andrea was nice enough to post the whole code so make sure you take a look at the bottom of his post.
If that wasn’t exciting enough, Sean Gillies posted today about using Python with ArcWeb. Seans example also includes the code so you can start playing around with Python and ArcWeb. Sean ran into a little trouble getting his Public ArcWeb Services activated, but in the end he was able to work it out and returned an image.
Sure, these great code examples won’t make you forget that one has to use SOAP, but at least you can get better acquainted with how the requests work so when REST arrives with AWS 2005 you’ll be ready to go.
Link – Using ArcWeb with PHP
Andrea Rosso has posted a quickstart guide to using ArcWeb Services with PHP. He goes into great detail about how to accomplish this so if you have been in interested in getting started with Public ArcWeb Services, but aren’t a Java, JSP or .NET fan, now you’ve go no excuse. Of course as with everything PHP it isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, but anyone with intermediate knowledge of web servers and programming should be able to follow the instructions.
There has been a couple times where I’ve wondered what has been added to ArcWeb Services and/or what changes have been made. Well inside the online help is a “What’s new page” with all that information. It hasn’t been updated since May, but maybe that is because the focus right now is upon AWS 2005.
A couple days ago I posted about how the satellite imagery in AWS was much worse than Google Maps. Andrea Rosso commented that AWS did have much better imagery than Google (though it costs more in credits). I decided to take a look myself using the credits we get from our ESRI Developer Network license to see how my little part of Tempe, AZ looks (I mentioned yesterday that Virtual Earth has really old imagery that doesn’t even show our building). Take a look at the GlobeXplorer Premium US example for my building at work (the grey roofed building in the middle of the image).
That is a great looking image right there. Compare it with the closest Google Map/Earth image below.
You can make out my building (yea, I didn’t center it too well), but compared to the detail of the ArcWeb Services it falls short. If high quality satellite imagery is needed, there is no comparison between AWS and Google Maps. Of course this isn’t available for Public AWS, but it does show how you can get more value out of ArcWeb Services if you do choose to do so.
Andrea did say that he though a “coverage map” would be a great idea for a service such as this so you can see if this very high quality imagery is available for your area so maybe we’ll see something for AWS 2005.
Andrea Rosso has posted some great info about data available in ArcWeb Services in the comments of a previous post. I wanted to pull those out so others can see what options are available with ArcWeb. His points are below:
- ArcWeb includes the GlobeXplorer Premium data sources which have a resolution of up to 6”. If you zoom into the San Diego area you get more detailed imagery than in Google Maps. They cost a little more than 1 credit but if they are only used when downloaded then the cost should be minimal. You’d be surprised what you’ll find using the GlobeXplorer Premium imagery outside of the US (especially in large Urban areas).
- The coverage map is a good idea and I’ll put it in as a suggestion for version 2005. The issue is visualizing it properly.
- We are releasing new datasets constantly so as soon as we have new imagery it’ll be quickly available.
Letting users know more about what data is available would be a great new service. The ESRI ArcWeb Services pages aren’t laid out too well for those who just want to see what they are able to view. The chart on the GIS Web Services page is great, but how about putting all the layers in there rather than just general terms and be able to click on a hyperlink to see a snapshot of that data in use? That would be really helpful to those of us who are just beginning to understand the power of ArcWeb.