UPDATE: This post got caught up in the tidal wave of blogger spam on PlanetGeospatial,
so I am re-posting it with todays date. I'm really interested in
hearing what other people think about this. However, in re-posting, dasBlog
seems to have misplaced the post - and along with it a comment - doh! For
those who subscribe directly to by RSS feed, sorry about the
repetition. -- Dave
With the upcoming launch of 9.2, I was
thinking about what I'd really like to see. While the
international
marketing extravaganza, with canned demos of simplistic use cases will be
interesting, it's not overly illuminating as to what users with "real" needs can
do.
Rather I'd like to see some real live
examples that people can play with. You would not buy a car without test driving
it, so I'm not sure why we would expect any less from our software vendor.
Here are some ideas...
ArcGIS Server: Web ADF
Let's see a real application with large,
complex data model - maybe based on the Local
Government data model. Show us an editing environment customized for non-GIS
pros who don't know or care about versioning. Throw in some imagery from Image
Server and make sure access is managed via ASP.NET security. Sounds like a tall
order, but consider that Local Governments are a prime target market, and it's
not that unreasonable.
From a developer perspective, I'd love
to read about how it was built, the best practices which lead to clean,
maintainable, testable code. And a glimpse behind the scenes at the hardware
that's powering it. This does not need to be totally public - make people login
with their ESRI Global Account, or limit it further to EDN subscribers. Whatever
- but let's see the beast in action so we know what we can expect.
ArcGIS Server: Geoprocessing
Although the "GP Solves all
Problems" rehetoric of last years DevSummit has somewhat died down, it would be
cool to see a real GP model - doing more that a trivial buffer operation or a
hill shade on a limited area, running in ArcGIS Server, accessible for EDN
developers. Get really daring and have it do some raster processing.
Make the model itself downloadable so we
can see how you've built it, talk about how you have optimized it, what hardware
it's running on, and what it's really doing.
ArcGIS Server: OGC Services
Fire up some WMS/WFS services that have
real data volumes behind them (say the state of California). Then let the
community hit it with whatever client they want to use and report requests per
second, data volumes and CPU utilization. If that level of access is a little
broad, show us how to limit access via a and restrict it to EDN subscribers.
ArcGIS Server: KML
If you've got the OGC Services up, add
on the KML service. Let people see what can be expected with this service. Of
course it's not going to be as fast as Google, but be transparent about the
hardware, and load, and I think that the user base will follow along.
ArcGIS Explorer "Tasks"
With the launch of ArcGIS Explorer, it
would be nice to see some real "tasks" that do something a little heavier than
reverse geocoding or returning the Zip+4 for a point. How about a site analysis
within an AOI? Or a network trace? Something that's actually using the
analytical power of ArcGIS. Something burly because that's what people are going
to expect/want when they drop cash for the backend ArcGIS Server software that
will support it.
Overall, I'd really like to see
demos that set realistic expectations. To date, the ArcGIS Server 9.2 hype has
been reaching snake-oil levels:
- Publish maps by merely thinking about it!
- Shed pounds by sleeping!
- Code? Nah - use geoprocessing for everything!
- Cures hemhroids & rhumatism!
- Run ArcGIS Server, ArcSDE and your web site all on one box!
Some reality will help everyone manage
expectations.