I’ve been reading the MapDotNet Server Blog this morning and it’s an interesting read. One quote that makes you stop and think from the “Do Recent ESRI Survey Results Forecast Trouble?” entry:
We’re tracking the latest development in web based mapping from Microsoft: Virtual Earth. VE makes it too easy for all of these .NET developers to deliver as compared to the ArcGIS platform. Coupled with MapDotNet Server, VE makes a complete, robust and easy to use platform.
2 responses so far ↓
1
Matt
// Mar 26, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I perused the MapDotNet site for the first time today as well. I’m not a developer or programmer, but it is intriguing how companies are gearing products to utilize the capabilities of Virtual Earth. We all had the discussion a few posts back about how integrated upcoming iterations of ArcGIS will fit with Virtual Earth. It sounds as if it should be sooner rather than later.
I’m your standard ArcIMS government customer, but as with most local governments, budgets are tight (especially in Michigan!). That being said, any way to deploy web-based mapping that could save us some $$$ (e.g., MapServer) is very palatable. Our internal users and future public users of our web-based GIS tools won’t (and don’t) care what’s running them on the back end. In fact, as taxpayers they’d like to have us deliver these services in the most economic fashion possible.
Cheers,
-Matt
2
Gretch
// Mar 26, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Interesting. Makes sense to me to use VE as the front end. I guess if you need Geoprocessing, AGS might be the way to go, but as someone who has tried to work with the GP model, I’m not too excited about pushing it to the clients.
Frankly AGS is too expensive in most cases for how people use it so getting less compelling to upgrade the servers to 9.2. ESRI seems content to go in the enterprise direction which is fine, I just don’t see going along with them for that ride.
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