Thanks for the reply Paul. > In true ESRI form, they re-named something generic > because it was GIS, so it needed a different name.
I know I dislike and object to how they define "two tier" and "three tier" ArcSDE architecture; they don't seem map with traditional IT notions of tiers. Gets my knickers in a twist. But then, since there's evidently no formal definition of Business Logic, perhaps they can be excused? And SOA evidently is a moving target. As with grammar, I think it's ok to break the rules: 1) if you know them and 2) if you preemptively explain to others why you broke them. Articulating ESRI architecture to traditional IT people tasked with building systems can result in either head scratching or brow furling. > What ESRI has done that has not been done in the OSS > world is standardize the bindings for their web > services so their clients can discover and > consume them on the fly. I don't know of any > non-ESRI consumers of ESRI "tasks". It does seem like they're pushing ArcGIS Explorer as a no-cost (to the user) alternative client to ArcGIS Desktop. Are you positive that ArcGIS Server web services can't be consumed by web browsers? > I also don't know of any reason why you wouldn't > want to expose your web services as something > a lot simpler, as the folks at mecklenburg did, > for example. Market security? The Obfuscation Advantage? I don't know. I do like ESRI products--and ESRI is a pioneer having done a great service for the profession; where would most of us be (lineage-wise) without them? But I get impatient and frustrated with the technology, especially when terms aren't defined clearly. Tobin is certainly doing cool things over in MC. A friend alerted me to a recent blog post, where Tobin built a small REST framework for PostGIS Web Services: http://maps.co.mecklenburg.nc.us/ft/?p=204 Good stuff. Check it out folks. Would love to see more. Dana ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs _______________________________________________ postgis-users mailing list [email protected] http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
