ESRI announced that the ArcWeb Services Flex Application Programmer Interface (API) is now available as a public beta. Built using Adobe Flex 2, this API offers significant benefits for organizations looking to change the way they do business. These new capabilities let developers focus much less on presentation and layout and spend more time on integrating content that is relevant to a particular business problem or end user workflow.
“This beta represents an important milestone for GIS Web Services, in fact over 650 developers have already signed up for the beta in the last 60 days," noted Mike Tait, Internet Solutions Group director at ESRI. “The ArcWeb Services Flex API beta provides a powerful set of visualization and analysis tools for developers building Web 2.0 applications. The end result is users are taking back control of how content is used and how the end results are displayed. Our customers are just beginning to uncover patterns and trends that they simply wouldn’t have seen before.”
The functionality is made possible through an integrated development framework that ties together the content, the user interface, and workflow. Benefits of the framework include end user functionality such as rearranging windows and widgets or activating or de-activating them to suit a unique work style. Multiple layers of content can also be finely manipulated depending on the problem that needs to be solved. For example, layers can be added, removed, reordered, or turned on and off dynamically, and layer transparencies can be adjusted on the fly.
“The ArcWeb Flex components and services enable the creation of rich GIS applications on the Web and desktop that leverage the ubiquity of Adobe Flash Player,” notes Ted Patrick, Flex technical evangelist. “ESRI continues to push the boundary with GIS visualization and the ArcWeb Flex release is a breakthrough component set for Flex developers.”
Organizations can also use the API to quickly add remote services such as ArcGIS Server maps, ArcIMS maps, or Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS (GeoRSS) feeds on any Web server without needing to set up a proxy or a custom data source within ArcWeb Services. The API also implements an Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) environment to help streamline the downloading and use of user interface components.
ArcWeb Services offer developers a comprehensive set of Web services APIs and geographic content hosted by ESRI for integrating mapping and geographic information system (GIS) functionality into browser, server, desktop, or mobile applications. The APIs include JavaScript, SOAP, REST, a Java ME Mobile Toolkit, and OpenLS. Organizations are using ArcWeb Services to build a wide range of applications for solving business problems such as fleet management and business intelligence.
On-demand geographic and business data is accessible through the APIs from more than 20 leading commercial data and content providers. This data includes driving directions, addresses, streets, points of interest, elevation, topography, weather, traffic, and business and population information for the United States and select countries.
To sign up for a free 90-day evaluation of the ArcWeb Services Flex 2 API, visit www.esri.com/flex or call 1-800-447-9778.
Source: ESRI
