If you are considering Microsoft Silverlight as an option to build a rich internet applications (RIA) while leveraging ArcGIS for geospatial web services, the ESRI team provided some guidelines during a presentation at the FedUC.
To get started, they advise developing the application with a combination of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Silverlight 3 although the current version of ArcGIS supports Silverlight 2 but will in the next release. As a platform for building the user interface (UI) and visualizing the application they also recommended Microsoft Expression Blend 3.
Why Expression Blend? While Visual Studio provides the platform for developing the "code behind" buttons, tools, etc., Expression Blend is more for the graphic designer. But for those organizations that don’t have both a developer and a designer, the two applications work in tandem. The actual "code behind" the UI is primarily extensible application markup language (XAML).
The ArcGIS API is built on Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The API allows the developer to combine RIA with ArcGIS Server and other services like Bing Map Enterprise Services. Once developed, applications are then rendered in a browser using the Silverlight plugin. The API is powered by ArcGIS Server REST services and is free for non-commercial users.
The features of the API include both tasks an controls. The tasks include "find data," Query," "Address Locator," and "Routing." Silverlight controls already include data grids and charts while the ESRI toolkit includes map-related functions such as "navigation," "map tips," "toolbar," "FeatureDataGrid," and a "MapProgressBar." The API also includes starter templates as well as extensible triggers, actions, and behaviors.
Each Silverlight application is compiled as a DLL just like a traditional .NET library and published the app as a XAP file, which is a ZIP archive containing Silverlight applications. To use XAP file the web server must serve out the XAP file with the correct MIME type. There is a need for cross domain access as well and this access requires a clientaccesspolicy.xml file; if not you’ll get an error because client policy is in place. See http:/services.arcgisonline.com/clientaccesspolicy.xml
More information on the ArcGIS API can be found at
Resources.esri.com. Go to the resource center for SDKs to download API - you’ll need an ESRI global account.
by Joe Francica on 02/18 at 02:53 PM |
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Among the factoids:
“TomTom (NL:TOM2 5.74, +0.31, +5.69%) said it earned 73 million euros ($99 million) after losing 989 million euros in the prior-year period, when it took a 1.05 billion euro hit from writing down the value of the TeleAtlas [sic] mapping service it acquired.”
“TeleAtlas [sic] revenue fell 8% to 50 million euros as demand for map licenses fell 10%.”
CEO Harold Goddijn:
“We see limited impact from this [map apps on phones] on our current revenue streams from PNDs, automotive and fleet management. The demand for applications that use location will grow across all markets and all geographies, and we see new opportunities for partnerships and business models, particularly in the mobile space.”
- MarketWatch
by Adena Schutzberg on 02/18 at 08:42 AM |
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“The first step in open government is showing where you’re putting money. The second way GIS can help is overlaying maps of where there are problems. That’s where you start to get into an information-driven government.”
- Jack Dangermond in an interview with NextGov at ESRI Fed UC regarding ESRI’s participation in the Recovery.gov website
by Adena Schutzberg on 02/18 at 08:06 AM |
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AND had hinted it was looking to team up with other smaller map data providers to offer a third independent worldwide dataset. The announcement of the Global Digital Mapping Alliance (GDMA) was made at theMobile World Congress going on this week in Barcelona. The announcement is really just a statement that the management of for now three companies is examining the potential of the Alliance, which would ideally have more partners in time. It’ll be based, as is AND, in The Netherlands.
The three companies at this point:
AND (map data coverage of W.Europe with over 350 M
people)
EMG (map data coverage of whole Great China with approx 1.300 M
people)
Orion (map data coverage of Middle East and North Africa with ca.
325 M people)
AND CEO Maarten Oldenhof said in a Reuters interview at MWC:
“The value in TomTom is in the content, in the maps, so in Tele Atlas. In a few years the PND market is dead, but until then TomTom will try to get as much out of that market as possible. The map has become the crust of the pizza, where others can add toppings to it via applications.”
- press release
- mission
- Reuters
by Adena Schutzberg on 02/18 at 07:33 AM |
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I met the Tableau folks at last year’s Location Intelligence Conference. Now word comes the company is making a free trial of its software available. The software and the company, hope to make Web-based charts and graphs and maps more interactive and social and fun. Wired notes that it’s still a complex undertaking for the non- programmers, but applauds, as do I, this aspect:
A major plus for the statistically-inclined or the fact-checkers among us is that anything published using Tableau Public requires that the source data remain accessible and downloadable to everyone.
No browser plug in is needed but the desktop tool to set up the visualizations and the server software is Windows only.
- Wired
- press release
by Adena Schutzberg on 02/18 at 06:00 AM |
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