tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9000904113127805348.post-67123268956699545982008-03-18T21:19:00.000-07:002008-03-18T22:07:02.905-07:00<h3>REST</h3><br />It was packed, and naturally <a href="http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2008/03/18/2008-esri-developer-summit-using-the-arcgis-server-rest-api/">people</a> more <a href="http://blog.davebouwman.net/2008/03/18/GettingSomeREST.aspx">vocal</a> than me have already posted (the first link, James Fee's, is especially good at explaining the technology).<br /><br />Some notes:<br /><ul><li>The structure to access layers is well-defined, but a little human-unreadable (admittedly, it's a programming interface). It'd be nice to address a layer by an alias (and possibly not have to worry about a reordering of the map document breaking everyone's programs)</li><br /><li>One of the things I'm interested in is a possible replacement for the <a href="http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcims/about/metadata-services.html">IMS Metadata Service</a>. I haven't taken a look at the metadata delivered, but I'll bet any replacement simply leverages the information published through the REST service.</li><br /><li>The 9.3 release will be read-only, with writing probably(?) in 9.4</li><br /><li>True curves (i.e. arcs) are densified (changed to line segments) when served out. While I wasn't completely clear on it, it sounded like that was standard across the ADF (or I'm being wishful; it currently causes a small failure).</li><br /></ul><br /><br /><h3>Mashups</h3><br />Another good session. Dave Bouwman has another <a href="http://blog.davebouwman.net/2008/03/18/ArcGISServerJavascriptAPIs.aspx">good review up</a>. I'd say it's even simpler than what Dave makes it out to be, but then again, I started off programming for money as a webmaster in grad school. I will need to dive into <a href="http://dojotoolkit.org/">Dojo</a> some more- I haven't done complex sites very recently. Dave's point about simple sites is right- and the biggest message I'm hearing from my clients- we need specialty apps that get the data across clearly.<br /><br />A lot of the Q &amp; A was taken up trying to nail home the fact that javascript is <i><b>a client-side language!</b></i> Once the data is transferred to the user, the server doesn't touch it unless it's uploaded back (which isn't completely out-of-the box).James Tedrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09727083592602514056noreply@blogger.com