From time to time, someone will stand up and proclaim themselves above “stacks”. I’ve done it and I’m sure you also do it. The reality is that we apply our preferences on our own GIS Stacks. Should you fear a stack As I often like to say, the best solution for the best problem. This might mean an ESRI stack one morning, a GeoServer stack in the afternoon and maybe a Microsoft stack at night. The term stack seems to be getting a bad rap in the geo world. I suppose being close minded about solutions (even within proprietary and open source stacks) can cause you to implement the wrong solution at the wrong price. I like the idea of the problem dictating what solution stack you’ll go with in the end. I’ve got preferences to my solutions, but I rarely enter a project exactly knowing what the whole stack will look like (beyond the OS). As I begin to prepare to kickoff a project next week with a client, I’m thinking tonight about what I’m working with; ArcSDE 9.2, Apache with Tomcat and Oracle 10g. Beyond that I’m free to work with whatever solution best meets the customers needs. Do we go with ArcGIS Server 9.2 or 9.3 Do we go with the Java Web ADF or the ESRI REST API Do we go with GeoServer or MapServer Do we go with the ArcGIS JavaScript API or OpenLayers?

I can’t wait until next week to find out our stack.

Will it be the stack behind door number 1, door number 2 or door number 3