More ArcGIS and JSON

Again, found this from Jithen Singh while stalking keywords. Still no details about whether it's for geospatial features or other application data.

There is a fair bit of noise in the Technorati search feeds, but no more so than on Planet Geospatial. Maybe even less.

Update: now there are details from Matt Priour.

Comments

Re: More ArcGIS and JSON

Author: Brian Flood

AGS does not currently support REST and they are only *considering* adding it to 9.3. I for one hope they do and made sure to tell as many ESRI folks as I could about it. the more chatter they hear, the more they will consider it. I think Matt's (excellent) post above is essentially rolling his own JSON support which is definitely possible right now. I would just love it if ESRI baked it in by default, IMO this would open AGS as a platform to many more frontends (openlayers, gmaps, ve, etc) and position it as a callable service instead of just the monolithic system they promote now (e.g. all ESRI, all the time) cheers brian

Re: More ArcGIS and JSON

Author: Matt Priour

According to Rex & Art at ESRI, the ArcGIS Server Web ADF should emit & consume JSON at 9.3 . This is a separate issue from REST support. Brian is correct that my above referenced post is purely a DIY thing. This has nothing directly to do with ArcGIS Server or its JSON support. I am merely demostrating how to take your own data which in not inherently spatial but is geo-referenced in some way and emitting it as a serialized object which ties the geo-reference to the data. From here you now have an object that you can use in a number of web-mapping platforms. I plan on demostrating ArcWeb Explorer, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, & Virtual Earth.

Re: More ArcGIS and JSON

Author: Brian Flood

hey matt yea, I can see future conversations now: "Hey, does AGS support REST? sure does, the ADF emits/consumes JSON." and some helpless developer reports that all is well in ESRI land. FUD reigns true as an implementation detail of the ADF is mistaken for easy interoperability. AGS 9.3 *might* have REST endpoints, after talking to several developers there, I did not walk away thinking it's a done deal. I do hope they add it in and I certainly hope it's not part of the ADF. cheers brian

Re: More ArcGIS and JSON

Author: Sean

I'm skeptical about JSON interoperability. Rolling your own JSON for use in your own application, as Matt and I are doing, is fine. If you need interoperability and extensibility, use XML. But I reserve the right to change my mind on this if anything compelling comes out of the Geo-JSON working group ;) RESTful ArcGIS? Non-SOAP services, sure, but I can't imagine anything more than that.