For the last while, ESRI has been appearing not only with Google but Virtual Earth and others, and have been discussing new APIs for delivering ArcGIS capabilities - the message is that they appear to be making a commitment toward deep integration and to fully support "Mashup-oriented" platforms via their APIs. So yes, we should definitely consider that the notion of more robust spatial analysis being upon us in those platforms - perhaps as soon as next week or so, with the release of ArcGIS Server 9.3. Along with this may come support for their modeling capabilities, extensions and other things.
However, it still remains to be seen what kind of horsepower is needed, how well they fully can interact with other pieces (e.g. PostGIS, accessing and streaming in external data sources on the fly, and so on). The idea and the model is great, and it's something I've championed for the last couple of years - though it remains to be seen how well it actually _works_. The other challenge is in what the framework looks like - there may well be a rush to go out and build these types of analytical capabilities without adequate forethought to being able to transparently, programmatically discover them, find their capabilities and be able to interact with them without needing to deal with proprietary issues or digging through API documentation. It will be an interesting year ahead... David G. Smith PE PLS Synergist Technology Group, Inc. 570.280.6763 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - NOTE: New cell phone number: 570-280-6763 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Shoaib Burq Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 2:53 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Spatial analysis was Re: MapMaker let us not forget that google and esri are in partnership ... so on the fly spatial analysis may be closer than we think. Shoaib -- http://geospatial.nomad-labs.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Liebhold Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Geowanking] Spatial analysis was Re: MapMaker This whole episode re-inforces the notion that mapmaking capabilities are now commonly useful and available, but comprehensive search and aggregation are incomplete and mostly useless, even at google. _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
