What Didn’t I Hear at the ESRI 2005 User Conference
Well I posted about things I liked, now what about two things I didn’t hear?
1. PostgreSQL support in ArcSDE I was really hoping to hear this, but no one I talked to would admit it was going to happen. The cost of SDE is so high because you need to pay for an commercial enterprise RDBMS. PostgreSQL is perfect for ArcSDE, but I guess I’ll have to continue looking at working with PostGIS.
2. Public ArcWeb Services It looks like the ArcWeb Services team got caught off guard with the announcement of Public (free) ArcWeb Services. They didn’t seem ready to answer questions, that I had other than to say they’ll look into it. As long as this is all figured out by AWS 2005 I’ll be happy, but it was a little disappointing to not learn more than I already knew.
Both of these were of strong interest to me going into the conference and I’m sure I’m in the minority in thinking that they are important, but they did dampen my enthusiasm just a little.
hey James, nice to meet you at the UC.
as to ArcWeb Public services, have you found out where the full description of what is actually included is located? Also, I was not able to get a full description on what the license actually covers. For instance, in Google Maps API, you can use their services for free if the web site is “generally available” to the public for free. That means I can be payed for hosting a web site by someone else and still use GMaps as long as the general public can access the site. I did not get the sense that AWP works like this. Then again, Google plans on throwing advertisments into the mix in the future.
do you have any info on this? Basically, what do I get and how can I use it?
brian
“As to ArcWeb Public services, have you found out where the full description of what is actually included is located?”
The best I could find was this page, but it doesn’t contain any detailed information.
“Also, I was not able to get a full description on what the license actually covers. For instance, in Google Maps API, you can use their services for free if the web site is “generally available” to the public for free. That means I can be payed for hosting a web site by someone else and still use GMaps as long as the general public can access the site. I did not get the sense that AWP works like this. Then again, Google plans on throwing advertisments into the mix in the future.”
I got the same feeling that you did. I think that right now ESRI hasn’t really put much thought into the license because everyone I talked to had a different opinion at the AWS Island. I asked a couple people that if it was a non-profit site, but accepted donations, would they be able to use it and the answer from most was no. I think they really need to think about this question because between the people getting paid to create sites and the sites that require donations that could really make people look elsewhere. The license isn’t set in stone or at least spelled out enough to make people confortable using AWS. I don’t think it is anything more than ESRI not really being ready to release AWP, but they just need to take a couple hours getting locked up in a room to get a good license that we can use.
thanks James, I’m not sure how I missed that page but you’re right, it does not give much info.
If a non-profit site that accepts donations cannot use AWP, they’re dead in the water as far as free APIs go.
When you go through the process of signing up for ArcWeb Public Services there is a license agreement that you have to agree too that spells some of these things out. It’s quite lenghty so I won’t paste it here but here is an excerpt:
ArcWeb Public Services. Qualified agencies, groups, or individuals may use selected Service(s) to develop Web-enabled mapping applications focused on supporting and/or promoting local, regional, or national events or interests, and/or activities concerning the public good and interest. Qualified agencies, groups or individuals may include, but not be limited to, non-profit local community groups, conservation, historical or preservation societies, educational and/or library support, church and/or charitable organizations. ESRI reserves the right to review, and at its sole discretion, determine, if the agency, group, or individual and its application qualify for an ArcWeb Public Service subscription. ArcWeb Public Services will contain the selected Service(s) and data coverage(s) described in Article 4.3 below.
MapImage
Coverage: Global satellite imagery and roads. Detailed street provided by Tele Atlas North America (TANA) and GDT.
Imagery provided by GlobeXplorer
Topographical maps provided by National Geographic
Place Finder Coverage: Global
Address Finder Coverage: Detailed streets provided by TANA and GDT.
RouteFinder Coverage: Detailed streets provided by TANA and GDT.
Query Coverage: Global
Point of Interest Coverage: North America and Europe, and selected User defined locations.
POI Manager Coverage: Global
Make sure that you read the whole agreement though…
Basically it’s a non-commercial license. So if you are going to be making money off of the site then you can use these services (unless ESRI gives you permission). Of course there are no ads, and you get quite a bit of content plus the ability to upload your own POIs.
thanks Andrea
so, how about a non-profit accepting donations? Or a municipal web site that is hosted by a third party?
Currently, the only advantage I see is the Route and Address Finder functionality but at the rate that Google, MS and Yahoo are competing (all of whom have this functionality), it will almost certainly be made available in the future. Also, the free data content AWP offers doesn’t seem that compelling when compared to the rest. I think you should offer the premium imagery right now, this will get you some testers/hackers almost immediately, mainly because the others don’t have it right now.
As to uploading POIs, I’m pretty sure Google made this model obsolete. Combining feeds of geocoded data on the client and overlaying them as markers is *the* driving force behind the “mashups”.
I will agree that until we all see what Google and MS are going to do with “map ads”, it may all be a moot point.
thanks again
brian
I guess it is all how you phrase the question Andrea. Thanks for the update. Is there a “clearinghouse” where we can run our proposals by someone at ESRI who can answer these kinds of questions? With Public AWS you are limited to the ESRI Forums for support and the less time I spend there the better.
Unfortunately I can’t provide an interpretation to the license. In my opinion these are ok but this needs an official answer. I’ll try to get some clarifications posted on the esri pages.
As far as content, if the data providers are willing to provide the content in Public services then they can be included otherwise they can’t. The premium imagery is expensive so it’ll take a lot of convincing to have this happen. More data will be added to the Public services as time goes on and as agreements get made. This feedback (and feedback through our forums etc.) always helps too.
As to the POIs, I would not agree that they are obsolete. I haven’t followed the mashups too much but the big advantage that you get with uploading POIs is proximity searching. You can’t just combine geocoded data and a map and allow someone to do a basic ‘find the closest 3′ type of search without writing a lot of code. Also, larger amounts of data (say even 10k points) becomes hard to deal with. In v2005 this is being extended to include lines and polygons and you can now start to do some very useful GIS analysis that you couldn’t do with just ‘mashing’ two data feed together.
I’m curious to see what happens with Google and MS with ads, but in the mean time, ArcWeb Public services is out and in production. It’s not going away, and there aren’t going to be any ads on the maps.
thanks for the comments Andrea, very helpful
license - please post back when you find out more, I’m sure there are others that would like to know as well.
content - better aerials would be killer, I think James has hit on that point already in another post
POIs - point taken, clearly the spatial searches on large amounts of points is better suited on the server but the majority of demos I’ve seen are just clipping to the map extent and returning a fixed limit. But, your point is a good one. Perhaps both could be used in conjunction somehow…
“map ads” - I’m not really sure where that will go but I’m glad AWP will not have them.
cheers
brian