The State of Mapping APIs, 5 Years On 100
macslocum writes "Map APIs took off in 2005, and during the ensuing years the whole notion of maps has changed. Where once they were slick add-ons, map functionality is now a necessary — and expected — tool. In this piece, Adam DuVander looks at the current state of mapping and he explains how mobile devices, third-party services and ease of use are shaping the map development world."
Google the first? Not really... (Score:5, Informative)
"Google had the first mapping API and continues to keep its lead by adding useful new features. "
I suspect the government and the various contractors and outside programmers who worked with them or with their data had the first mapping API. It was used for the TigerLINE data that all the rest of this data is originally based off of. It wasnt some internal govt only project, but something anyone could either download (free) or purchase and use. There are a variety of such tools (various with their own APIs), numerous ancient (Win95/98 era) which far predates Google's tools and APIs.
Re:Google the first? Not really... (Score:5, Informative)
Obligatory: I work at ESRI and find it hilarious that we're not mentioned in that article apart from the related video.
http://www.esri.com/software/mapping_for_everyone/api/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esri
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Yes, ESRI is the leading force in the cartographic industry. But outside of the industry 99% of people have never heard of ArcMap or anything else you make. They might see it in the end result if the local government uses your JavaScript/Flash/Silverlight API to cook up something, but Google's the big name in the room as they put something user-friendly on the web before you guys. Yeah, you still had the professional-grade software suite back then, but only the professionals used it then and only they use i
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Have you ever tried to you ESRI mapping APIs though? A few THOUSAND poorly documented COM+ components (and 1:1 wrappers if you want to use dotnet) does not an API make.
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You're 100% right, the last I looked at esri was almost exactly 3 years ago. At the time we moved away because our local ESRI prof svcs guy essentially told us web apis/soap/etc were not in the pipeline.
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Also stuck with 9.2. Try importing a 9.3 toolbox for fun or even just a 9.3 Python script. Next step, claw eyes out and bash head against keyboard for 2 or 3 days.
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Ha, I almost tried to get an upgrade to 9.3 maybe I am glad I didn't now. Perhaps just wait until I get a new work computer and do it then fresh, sounds safer that way.
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Re:Google the first? Not really... (Score:4, Informative)
Seems like the article focuses on the interface layer (hence the name "The State of Mapping API's). However, I think the hard work is the collection of the underlying map data. One of the more interesting projects is the OpenStreetMap project where map data is crowdsourced.
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Considering Google Maps/Google Earth got 99% of their data from someone else using the afore mentioned software...
Re:Google the first? Not really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google the first? Not really... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow. You actually admit that wou work for ESRI? Like that is something to be proud of?! Oh wait, you did that anonymously. I certainly wouldn't want to be associated with that steaming pile of "software".
The only reason you guys are anywhere is due to the way that you've muscled your way into government/state use and thereby forcing anyone wanting to do contract work to use your buggy, ridiculously over priced applications. Seriously, $7,000 for GIS editing software??? Then tens of thousands more for shitty, outdated ArcSDE?
Yeah, I think there is a reason why ESRI wasn't mentioned and that is because your poorly documented APIs, lousy commitments / involvement in OGC (way to be an industry leader) and lack of any real innovation--nothing good has come out of Redlands in more than 5 years.
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Re:Google the first? Not really... (Score:4, Insightful)
You think Arc is "steaming pile of 'software'"? I've tried a few of the free alternatives (QGIS, MapWindow, Thuban), and, while ambitious projects, they don't come anywhere close to Arc. Can you suggest something better?
MS Word is better and more feature-ful than the competition, but that doesn't mean it's not a steaming pile [imagicity.com]. The two categories are not mutually exclusive.
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Agreed. It IS a steaming pile of crap. It just happens to be the BEST steaming pile of crap currently available. I work with it, and have for 10 years. It is amazing the stuff that is wrong with it that never gets fixed. Or the stuff than breaks when they do actually fix or change something.
For instance just last week my pet project / obsession was trying to permanently sort (ie so as soon as you close the attribute table your working on it doesn't revert back to the original sort order) a simple table. Aft
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Oh and they still use DBF table structures. Wah?
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Clueless users (or organizations with massive legacy problems) who still use shapefiles, a data format defined almost 20 years ago, still use DBF table structures. Esri has been trying to kill off shapefiles for quite a while now, but they're still heavily used as a data interchange format and simply by users who don't know any better.
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And anyway, for most users, a WYSIWYG word processor is a lot easier to get to grips with than a command/text-based system. Sorry, but it's true.
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uDIG seems the best of the free ones, if a bit slow at times.
As an aside I'm curious to know if anyone has used Manifold [manifold.net], the website does seem to claim it does everything you might possibly want for one low-low price :)
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The AC is right, ArcMAP, SDE, SERVER is a steaming pile of crap. Most GIS people would rather use MapInfo or ERDAS Imagine but the edict to use ESRI is handed down from on high. I used to work for a direct competitor to ESRI and our dinky little product outperformed ESRI's IMS and WMS up t
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I have mod points and I considered moderating your post but I couldn't decide to mark it down or up (it could easily work both ways) so I decided to respond instead:
Yes, ESRI shapefiles are prevalent in the public sector and the software is expensive and difficult to use. Thankfully you can now easily convert SHP files into KML and display a lot of the work done in the public sector for use everywhere else.
I have a small archive of stuff I have converted from SHP to KML in Minnesota available here [lazylightning.org] which are
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I have used some of the alternatives. They are not good. ESRI has problems I will agree. With how technology is going, if they don't get off their laurels and hike up their socks, they are going to be in real trouble over the next ten years I predict.
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I work at ESRI and find it hilarious that we're not mentioned in that article
The rest of us also find this hilarious, but for different reasons.
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Just to clue everyone in, ESRI is the Microsoft of GIS except MS products typically have less bugs (yes I am trying to deploy ArcSDE 10 at the moment but for some reason it wont create the damn repository and the SDE (esri_sde) service crashes every time we try to start it).
Grumble, grumble, yes ESRI have been at the whole web mapping (WMS - Web Mapping Service) thing a lot longer then
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Yes comparing a free online service to a professional editing tool where a single licence runs you 10k is a fair comparison.
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"On the features and use - absolutely."
Not sure what world you are living in. One has lots of features, the other has zero pretty much. Google simply display's data, there is really nothing you can do with it.
An apt analogy would be Adobe and Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader may be pretty good, and a copy of it may be installed on every persons computer in the whole world, and it is free.... but it ain't going to be hell of a lot of good without Adobe.
ESRI should be wary, but until Google starts expanding into th
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I found that pretty funny too. I also find it painful to see heatmap used in a cartographic sense.
I've been developing GIS software since 1996, and I have to tell you that while no one toolset is ideal, I've found ESRI's the easiest to use in a production environment. I've use most of the open source GIS tools, even written some papers on them (that apparently were good enough to be cited by other authors), and yet I keep coming back to ESRI's suite.
Perfect, no. Better than the alternatives? definitely.
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There's an ESRI office down the hall from me...
I really wonder why they have a satellite office here and what they do there. It's not listed on the website anywhere.
Late night pseudo-intellectual wankery (Score:3, Interesting)
For those interested in mapping - Strange Maps [bigthink.com] has some awesome examples.
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Given that cultur
The old Guard from my perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things stood out in the culture of GIS:
- A non importance of solid data handling and storage. Flat files were the order of the day.
- Antialiasing was not prevalent. While not required for anayltical work, in presentation it was, but many big name tools did not make the jump. 8 bit was common.
- Presentation was done by govt depts and were fairly snazzy for the day, in 8bit alisaed glory
Now we see were we are today, and its all to do with the fact non mapping companies have got involved without the hangups of the old GIS attitudes from govt depts, universities, and the big name tool vendors influencing them. Companies like MS, Google, have presented maps and GIS so superior to the traditional industry, that even Depts Lands, Mapping and Survey(or whatever called in your country) are resorting to Google maps.
We now have depts of GIS professionals along with proprietry vendor tools being trounced by private enterprise.
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I also heard rumoring of upcoming Spatial support in Azure (might be already here), so if that goes well, companies dealing with alot of customer map data will have a sweet way to move it all to
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Can you amplify on this a bit? Looking at the editions comparison page, it appears that the spatial features are included even in the free version of SQL Server (SQL Server Express). Am I missing something? (like it's feature complete, and just doesn't include some proprietary dataset, or dev tools, or...?)
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If you want free, go for PostGIS.
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From what I know, the Microsoft offering is not feature complete, a bit like their free-text search indexing in SQL server, its always a step behind Oracle's. I know we use Oracle for its spatial capabilities because the SQL server doesn't quite cut it for the really cool stuff.
For free versions - MySQL has spatial [mysql.com] in it for some time. That's still free, and hopefully Oracle will improve the capabilities if only to annoy MS and capture the market that you represent - the 'we want it free until we have to bu
Re:The old Guard from my perspective (Score:4, Informative)
There is a module for PostgreSQL called PostGIS with quite impressive feature set... It's there for a while, it is actively developed and have support from PostgreSQL core hackers.
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Oracle have supported GIS data for quite some time. In the mapping industry its quite common.
Anyway, WMS was left out of the article. Its been around since 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Map_Service [wikipedia.org]
Can you count to 2?? (Score:2)
Two things stood out in the culture of GIS:
- A non importance of solid data handling and storage. Flat files were the order of the day.
- Antialiasing was not prevalent. While not required for anayltical work, in presentation it was, but many big name tools did not make the jump. 8 bit was common.
- Presentation was done by govt depts and were fairly snazzy for the day, in 8bit alisaed glory
If that is how you count to 2, I hope to the spaghetti monster that I never have to use one of your maps.
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Two things stood out in the culture of GIS:
- A non importance of solid data handling and storage. Flat files were the order of the day.
- Antialiasing was not prevalent. While not required for anayltical work, in presentation it was, but many big name tools did not make the jump. 8 bit was common.
- Presentation was done by govt depts and were fairly snazzy for the day, in 8bit alisaed glory
If that is how you count to 2, I hope to the spaghetti monster that I never have to use one of your maps.
How a programmer counts to two: 0, 1, 2.
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Yes and no.
1) Where do you think Google Maps/Google Earth got its data from? The afore mentioned dinosaurs.
2) While easy on the eyes, you can't do analytical work with them. The tools and the data just isn't there, as it has all be simplified for public consumption. If we want a pretty map, in the past we would call a cartographer and build us a pretty map. GIS was and is for analytical work, for use in making decisions.
While serving it up to the public is nice, and sometimes snazzy it hasn't been the prima
Licenses? (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want is a blog post that actually explains all the various mapping licenses. Preferably in a simple table format. I don't like to read.
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That would definitely explain a few things.
You on the other hand, don't like to login, do you?
But seriously, there is so much noise surrounding the information on the internet that I too like that information as usable as possible. No prose, no fancy opinions but usable facts.
Now I'm off arranging my "get off" signs in a sensible pattern on my lawn.
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I second that and I do like to read but reading license agreements is like torture.
More Important than the Maps (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the thing that was most impressive, at the time, was how they got JavaScript to do all that in a browser. Now, that was impressive.
Is it my impression or did AJAX really take off after people saw Google Maps?
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Is it my impression or did AJAX really take off after people saw Google Maps?
I kind of remember it that way, too, but there were already AJAX (or AJAX-like) toolkits in the works by the time Google Maps was announced in 2005. Tibco General Interface certainly predates it, and so does Dojo Toolkit. Prototype came out around the same time. I think the truth is that a lot of people got the same ideas around the same time, but Google was among the first to market with a cool (and visually impressive) use for those ideas.
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Yeah, after a whole bunch of people noticed that Outlook web access wasn't messing around with iframes.
ok seriously (Score:3, Interesting)
why cant they take all this map data and have racing or GTA type games where you can drive in places you're familiar with?
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I'd be happy with a flight simulator that had an option to pull its ground textures from these sites. yeah, i know about the flight sim in google earth... I'm talking about something a more complex., like x-plane, ms flight sim, or even orbiter.
UMN Mapserver (Score:2, Informative)
Satellite images (Score:2)
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I have had a similar experience with satellite imagery and data, but I have to say, despite the ESRI bashing going on earlier in the comments (much of which I agree with) ArcInfo was ultimately able to handle everything I threw at it without too much fuss. They certainly don't make it easy to figure out how to avoid the "fuss", though.
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I was distracted and forgot the main points I wanted to make, regarding getting at the data in the first place and processing it. Getting the data also involves a lot of "fuss" but once you figure out where the thing you want comes from (NASA, USGS, etc. all have their own sites and systems for accessing the data) it's fairly trivial. Again, they don't make it easy to figure out how to avoid the fussing around, so I definitely agree with you there.
Also I was quite frustrated with doing analysis. GeoTIFF sou
No way to add POI on GMaps? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is there no way to add/update POI on apps like Google Maps?
So many of the existing POI are out of date, and many are missing... why can't I just edit the information myself directly from my Android phone or Maps on the PC? Of course, the changes would need to be approved before they're actually integrated into Maps, but I feel like they're leaving a lot of potential untapped here.
OSM supports this, of course, but the Android apps are absolute crap... not to mention the maps of Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe. :(
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most PoI are created from external data sources, not entered by hand. So your beef is with the companies that supply that data. The problem with manually modifying them is that there are a lot of them, and you'd so quickly build up a backlog longer than anyone could manage. Maybe they could get an automated system in place, where enough people who update the same POI 'validate' their own work and have the update accepted would work.
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Ah, good point. Is there a place where I could check which sources Google uses for their Maps POI? Some of them are clearly marked/stated but others are just there without any hint as to how they got there...
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no idea, sorry. It will change according to the country anyway. Usually its government datasets, plus 'yellow pages' type data from commercial companies.
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Interesting... how do I get it to display as an overlay? I can't really seem to select both Google Maps and the WIkiMapia map at once.
Also, is there an Android app? :p
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Found the app... Doesn't really seem to work though. Just displays a list of stuff that's been mapped out with checkboxes... no way to actually display a map :(
http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.MapiaExplorer [appbrain.com]
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They need reduce also. (Score:1)
The 'map' API will remain fairly useless until they also develop the 'reduce' API. Then developers will get the full power of a map-reduce API.
Another way of summarizing the article... (Score:2)
Now, Garmin's newest GPS doubles as an Android phone, the iPad (still waiting for an Android tablet) is the biggest GPS module available and one can find their way from practically anywhere with internet access just by knowing the destination.
Paper maps aren't dead, but they are needed much less nowadays.
where are my free maps? (Score:1)
I recently became interested in hiking/orientiering, and i tried to find maps geographical maps online that could be used for this purpose. Couldn't find any apart from the government (Sweden). I will have to pay for the maps.
I was quite surprise to tell the truth. I have no involvment with the mapping industry, but I would have thought by now after Google came out with Google Earth and satellite images became so prevalent that it was simply a matter of time before all mapping was free? I can go onto th