[mapserver-users] Mapserver vs. ArcIMS

[Richard Greenwood]

Jim,

I think every university has a site license for ArcIMS, and every other 
product ESRI ever tried to market. ArcIMS uses Java Servlets, so you are 
not restricted to windows, although I am not sure what level of support 
there is for Linux, it does run on various UNIX platforms.

Installing the ArcIMS server on your Java Servlet engine of choice is 
challenging. Once you get it going it has some nice wizard type tools to 
help you get pretty sophisticated interactive map pages up very easily. In 
terms of the user experience, mapserver "seems" much faster than ArcIMS, 
but I don't have numbers to back that up.

If you are sharp enough to get ArcIMS running smoothly on a Java Servlet on 
Nt, or whatever, you are certainly sharp enough to get a nice mapserver 
page going on the platform of your choice. Mapserver is fast, stable, and 
has various interfaces (CGI, and scripting interfaces in Perl and PHP, and 
I think others). Mapserver is well thought out and offers a variety of ways 
to solve a problem.

If you are committed to putting sophisticated GIS content on the web, go 
with mapserver. If you are in a hurry, and have good Java Servlet 
experience, ArcIMS will work. If you are doing a needs assessment, 
implementation plan, or product comparison - there are other products out 
there that should not be overlooked.

Rich

At 02:51 PM 11/8/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>I have just found out that my university has a site license for ArcIMS.
>This makes me wonder about the differences in capability between
>Mapserver and ArcIMS.
>
>One thing that jumps out at me is that I would have to run ArcIMS on a
>Windows server, something I want to avoid due to all the security
>problems that we have had with our Windows servers.  With Mapserver I
>can use Linux, which we have used on our web servers and database server
>with great reliability.
>
>However, I would assume that (for a non-programmer like me) ArcIMS is
>easier to use and has more capabilities. Is there anyone out there who
>has experience with both systems and can comment?
>
>Thanks, Jim


Richard W. Greenwood, PLS
Greenwood Mapping, Inc.
Rich at GreenwoodMap.com
(307) 733-0203
http://www.GreenwoodMap.com