[Tilecache] Building static tilecache with ESRI software

[Eric Wolf]

I'm trying to figure out the easiest/best way to create a static tile
cache (prerendered) of a map layout created in ArcGIS to be accessed
using OpenLayers.

Here's the background: The current USGS real time earthquake website
uses pre-rendered maps using circa 1995 technology. These maps get
rendered as static graphic files on a system at the Survey and then
copied to servers at Akamai. This works well because immediately
following any decent quake, traffic to this site jumps to
hundreds-of-thousands of hits per second.

The basemaps for the rendering code are basically a collection of
static graphics exported from ArcGIS. The basemap symbology has been
carefully constructed for this purpose by real cartographers.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to assemble a more dynamic
website - but a typical ArcServer->Web Browser or
GeoServer->OpenLayers system won't be able to scale to the kind of
traffic seen immediately following a quake. The
GeoServer->Tilecache->OpenLayers is an obvious step in the direction
we need to go - but I don't really want to have to replicate the
ArcGIS symbology in GeoServer (or Mapnik or MapServer).

So I'm trying to figure out if I use ArcServer to generate a static
tilecache (i.e., the collection of 256x256 png files), how can I
access it via OpenLayers?

One possibility is to try to get the AGS extension to OpenLayers
working (which seems to be abandoned). Another is to kludge
TileCache.cgi for the directory structure generated by ArcServer's
tile cache seeding. And yet another is to try to restructure the tiles
generated by ArcServer in a way that TileCache.cgi likes.

Any help is much appreciated.

-Eric

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Eric B. Wolf                          720-209-6818
USGS Geographer
Center of Excellence in GIScience
PhD Student
CU-Boulder - Geography