Rich, The main difference I have seen is in the support for data formats. With the ESRI JS API you can only render a map service if it was published through ArcGIS Server to their REST API. That means no direct reading of WMS or WFS as well as the many other data source OL supports. The only way to get to WMS or WFS is to publish it through ArcGIS Server.
With that said the two have a lot of similarities. The main difference is the ESRI api has support for query, find, geocode and geoprocessing services through ArcGIS Server. Bottom line is if you have ArcGIS Server it works great, if you don't you are very limited to what you can do with the API your data because you have no mechanism to publish it to a supported services. Hope this helps a little. If you have any other questions feel free to contact me offline. Regards, Brian Fischer Houston Engineering Maple Grove, MN -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Greenwood Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 10:02 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [OpenLayers-Dev] OL versus ESRI JS API Has anyone done a comparison of, or wish to comment on, OpenLayers versus ESRI's JavaScrip API? I am reasonably familiar with OpenLayers but completely new to the ESRI API so I am having difficulty comparing the two. I am looking for a very high level comparison for a presentation that I am preparing. Thanks, Rich -- Richard Greenwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.greenwoodmap.com _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list [email protected] http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list [email protected] http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
