Link: Brian Flood : Google Maps API and WMS Servers (dead link).
Boy it didn’t take Brian very long to get working on the Google Maps WMS service. I think Brian is right on with his assessment, most developers will want to display WMS layers on a GMap, rather than the inverse. Still the Gmap juggernaut moves forward.
Looks like there is a new blogger at ESRI. Art’s Place (dead link) has its first blog post and I hope he continues to post. Art asks (dead link):
“Within the walls of ESRI, I keep hearing that C++ based clients that
require a download of 60+ mb is ok – just look at iTunes (BTW, iTunes is a 21 mb
download) and that web based GIS is not as important to our users. Well, I do
not believe this to be the case and feel that we need to reinvent GIS on the Web
with a rich web based version of ArcGIS. Does anyone have any comments towards
this? What are your opinions? I would like to hear them and maybe bring that
back to ESRI.”
I wrote my theory on the subject a couple weeks ago. While I still believe in web based GIS, the costs involved at least using ESRI technology is very hard for some of our clients to overcome. They have embraced ArcPublisher and ArcReader which makes sense in a workgroup environment. I can’t imagine the cost of an ArcServer type of application that would allow web ArcGIS (ArcView/ArcEditor) to run.
Now that everyone is starting to use the Google Maps API to do tons of web mapping, don’t you think it is time for ESRI to offer their own web services?
Come now people, how long have we been doing things like Google Weather Map with ArcWeb Services. I’m not saying Google Maps API isn’t cool, its just that most of this has been done before. Has ESRI lost out because they didn’t open up their API like Google has? I’m guessing it is in their best interest not to get involved with Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps or MapPoint. It is easy to get excited about the “script kiddies” and their interesting applications they are building, but I don’t think much of this will lead anywhere as they will tire of their web mapping applications and move on. Stability is what leads developers to ESRI and their products, not eye candy.