When I visited ESRI a couple weeks ago I was told there wouldn’t be as much REST documentation as SOAP and that made sense to me at the time as using SOAP was pretty much the only way to take advantage of ArcWeb in the past. Still after playing with REST and ArcWeb this weekend, I’m a little disappointed at the documentation. Hopefully this will improve as ArcWeb 2006 gets rolled out more, but if I was starting out with ArcWeb 2006 I’m sure I would be confused to how it all works. Of course one could visit the ArcWeb REST forums on ESRI’s support site, but I doubt many programmers would bother as Google Search is how most of us get our information.
That said, I’m really impressed with the changes in ArcWeb 2006 over the older v2 version. The map quality around the world is much better than Google’s (at least where I tried).
Update - I got an email from a reader who wants to know what I’d expect from ESRI as far as REST documentation. Well I don’t think one has to go as far as Google did with theirs, but I’d like that after you sign up for ArcWeb Public Services you’d get code that could make a simple map with map controls to zoom/pan much like Google does. That would give anyone the opportunity to make a map and post it on a webpage. The simple example from Google is here, just a cut and paste “Hello World” application which creates this map. ESRI’s default example isn’t that easy due to how one has to request the token.
[tags]arcweb, rest, googlemaps[/tags]
4 responses so far ↓
1
Andrea Rosso
// Nov 28, 2005 at 3:50 pm
James,
One of the items we are still tweaking in ArcWeb v2006 before final release is the documentation. We are going to be adding samples, quick starts, etc. to the rest documentation. After the release from time to time we’ll be adding to the docs and samples as needed or as we get feedback.
One thing I wanted to point out is that the REST API is just about getting back the map itself. It does not include navigation tools for instance. This is functionality that will be available in ArcWeb Explorer as an embeddable map on your site. At that point we will have samples on how to use this too.
Andrea
2
Derek Baker
// Nov 28, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Andrea,
James did send me the code he was using to create his REST ArcWeb maps (he had a very crude pan tool) and I liked the fact that it was all javascript. Will ArcWeb Explorer be javascript also or will it be only Flash?
3
James Fee
// Nov 28, 2005 at 4:15 pm
very crude pan tool
I prefer to call it a “novel” panning tool.
Some of the ArcWeb Explorer stuff blends in with my memories of the ArcIMS/Server ADF, but I do think there was a non-flash version. I’m sure Andrea can answer.
4
Andrea Rosso
// Nov 30, 2005 at 12:56 am
ArcWeb Explorer is Flash based but will have a JavaScript API so that you don’t have to deal with Flash/ActionScript at all if you don’t want to.
Andrea
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