Mapserver <=> ArcIMS comparison

[Rob Atkinson]

Hi Folks,

Although I am neither ready nor completely free to comment on ArcIMS there are a few
issues I thought I'd float an interest in.

I've been heavily involved in the OpenGIS Consortium - particularly concerned at
discovery of network addressable resources - ie how do you catalog, retrieve and
store in profiles references to map and non-map services. I guess I see the future
for mapserv and other products very differently - I want to eat directly into the
85% of project time that is involved in getting your personal out-of-date copy of
data you only want as context or to perform a once off analysis!

Anyway, to the point, there are "metadata" for services being developed, and several
of us have been looking at the "context" or application level metadata - this is
what AXL really is, as is the map file. Ourselves, NASA and ESRI have similar XML
contexts we could potentially merge into a standard.

Just imagine the same syntax used to pass a session between applications, or using
it for referencing both local and remote sources of data.

This isnt going to happen overnight - and will need to derivce from the best
practice in the mainstream Web world - which is only just starting to come to grips
with machine addressable interfaces - see Tim Berners Lee's sematic web or the
Microsoft-IBM-Ariba UDDI efforts.

Planning to have some demos (that will include mapserv by the way) by end of
calendar year.

Cheers

Rob Atkinson

imap at chesapeake.net wrote:

> Thanks to Michael and others who commented on this thread
> for the detailed comparison of MapServer <=> ArcIMS.    It sounds as if the
> ArcIMS "New MapService" is fairly easy to use and setup a new mapserver
> configuration.   THat is something that Mapserver is sorely lacking.  Needed
> are a set of screens that a user can walk thru, to setup a map service.
> Digging a little deeper into this comparison,  I am particularly interested to
> see a working example of the ArcIMS Map File equivilent (*.axl) for
> informational
> purposes.  I understand that it is XML...  and I'd like to had a look at their
> definitions, scope, syntax etc.   If anyone out there has a one of these files,
> could they please send or upload a sample .axl, it would be appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Chris Stuber (mapsurfer)
> Silicon Mapping Solutions, Inc
> (410)257-3187
>
> Michael Anderson wrote:
> >
> >     I have been using both ArcIMS and MapServer for a few months. Before I
> > give my opinion on a comparison, I would like to point out that the scope of
> > what ArcIMS and MapServer attempt to do is different. ArcIMS has several
> > components designed to do things that MapServer alone doesn’t address. This
> > includes html and applet based viewers for the client as well as several
> > components on the server. The components on the server include the
> > application server, manager components, and the spatial servers. The spatial
> > server is what renders the images, handles spatial queries, extracts
> > features, etc. The manager components allow you to build “Map Services” (map
> > files), create web sites using the map services, and publish the sites.  The
> > application server allows you to distribute pieces of your application over
> > multiple machines and pool several machines to handle increased loads.  It
> > also allows you to use COM and Cold Fusion in your application as the
> > “connector” between the web server and application server. ArcIMS has two
> > additional components that start and stop processes and delete images on a
> > schedule.
> >         MapServer alone is only analogous to the spatial server, but the other
> > features can be added using other tools. Other than being able to use fewer
> > data formats, MapServer is a better spatial server than ArcIMS’s. By using
> > an existing web application server you can get the additional functionality
> > with a minimal amount of work. I am using Zope, which is Python based, as my
> > application server. It is also Open Source. It is a much better application
> > server than the ArcIMS component. In addition to allowing you to distribute
> > your application, and pool machines, it also handles user authentication,
> > and gives Unix like permissions to files, URLs, and operations. It also
> > handles publishing the sites easily. I haven’t gotten around to using it to
> > make the map files or the web site though. I use ArcView to make the map
> > files and have someone else make the web site. Zope does allow me to share
> > single html and JavaScript files across multiple web sites, which makes
> > maintenance a lot easier. It is also possible to use Zope as a connector to
> > ArcIMS so a single application could use both MapServer and ArcIMS (as well
> > as other GIS engines). I am also aware of a Java based application server
> > called Enhydra that is also Open Source. I have installed it, but haven’t
> > had much time to use it, so I can’t really say what it can do. There are
> > also commercial application servers available like IBM’s WebSphere. You
> > could probably do a lot with Cold Fusion as well.
> >
> > That said, here is my 2 cents on the advantages and disadvantages of ArcIMS:
> >
> > Advantages of ArcIMS
> > - distribute applications over multiple machines
> > - Native integration with the Geography Network. MapServer can be made to
> > work within the geography network.
> > - Includes software to handle routine tasks like making the map services
> > (map files), designing web sites, etc.
> > - Supports more data formats – especially raster
> > - Better support for storing spatial data in RDBMS through SDE
> > - You don’t have to try to sell a relatively unknown product (MapServer) and
> > philosophy (Open Source)
> >
> > Disadvantages of ArcIMS
> > - speed (even running mapserv as regular cgi it is much faster)
> > - resource hog
> > - limited OS (no Linux)
> > - less stable. My ArcIMS experience is on NT so that may be more a
> > reflection of the OS than ArcIMS.
> > - poorer support
> > - source code unavailable
> > - cost
> >
> > Mike
> >
> > Michael Anderson
> > Spatial Information Technologies, Inc.

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Rob Atkinson                     Email: rob at socialchange.net.au
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