[OpenLayers-Dev] OL versus ESRI JS API

[Fischer, Brian]

Rich,

The main difference I have seen is in the support for data formats.
With the ESRI JS API you can only render a map service if it was
published through ArcGIS Server to their REST API.  That means no direct
reading of WMS or WFS as well as the many other data source OL supports.
The only way to get to WMS or WFS is to publish it through ArcGIS
Server.

With that said the two have a lot of similarities.  The main difference
is the ESRI api has support for query, find, geocode and geoprocessing
services through ArcGIS Server.

Bottom line is if you have ArcGIS Server it works great, if you don't
you are very limited to what you can do with the API your data because
you have no mechanism to publish it to a supported services.

Hope this helps a little.  If you have any other questions feel free to
contact me offline.

Regards,
Brian Fischer
Houston Engineering
Maple Grove, MN

-----Original Message-----
From: dev-bounces at openlayers.org [mailto:dev-bounces at openlayers.org] On
Behalf Of Richard Greenwood
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 10:02 PM
To: dev at openlayers.org
Subject: [OpenLayers-Dev] OL versus ESRI JS API

Has anyone done a comparison of, or wish to comment on, OpenLayers
versus ESRI's JavaScrip API? I am reasonably familiar with OpenLayers
but completely new to the ESRI API so I am having difficulty comparing
the two. I am looking for a very high level comparison for a
presentation that I am preparing.

Thanks,
Rich

-- 
Richard Greenwood
richard.greenwood at gmail.com
www.greenwoodmap.com
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