OK, it doesn’t exist yet, but I want it. For those who don’t know about Mapdex, it is a huge index of web mapping services you can search to find datasets from around the world. Part of ArcGIS Explorer includes is a section that allows you to program tasks. I’d love to be able to type in a search and allow Mapdex to find the layers and then have them appear in ArcGIS Explorer. Since ArcGIS Explorer supports so many file types it could become the way to find GIS web mapping services. In fact ESRI should contact Jeremy Bartley right away to make sure this task makes it into the default ArcGIS Explorer program.
I’m not sure what ESRI has planned for the beta release, but hopefully they’ll have good support for creating and sharing these tasks (its that community thing again I’m always talking about).
2 responses so far ↓
1
Brian Flood
// Dec 29, 2005 at 9:27 am
yea, this would be a cool feature. I’m really interested in seeing just how flexible the AGE customization framework will be. Originally, I had heard you would be able to build both tasks and map tools, each of which would need signifcant access to the underlying clientside API if they were to be useful. However, I then read on David M. blog that we should be thinking more about the server side when programming AGE. Maybe I read that comment wrong but I hope they are not restricting what can be done on the client side. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m sure Jeremy and Asif can get a task based on their REST api in there.
Also, I’m assuming the “slim” version of ArcObjects they are using is a completely different build then the current ArcGIS stuff. I hope there will be no version conflicts (e.g. you need version 9.1 if you want AGE and ArcGIS installed side by side)
ps - I can’t believe Rutgers almost beat ASU…
2
James Fee
// Dec 29, 2005 at 9:31 pm
From what I’ve heard, ArcGIS Explorer isn’t really part of the ArcGIS “platform” so I assume that means it won’t interfear with an existing ArcGIS install.
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