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GIS Community Blocks Esri's Geospatial 'Open Standard' REST API

Posted by Unknown on from the ooxml-repeats-itself dept.

Bismillah writes "The developer of ArcGIS, Esri, has dropped its bid to have the GeoServices REST API recognized as an open standard by the Open Geospatial Consortium, after a community backlash against 'providing a vendor with significant market advantage, erring on the creation of a state-sanctioned monopoly.'"

5 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Lesson learned by gandhi_2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ESRI is THE 800 pound gorilla in GIS.

    The FOSS offerings are pretty cool, but I see no "black swan" like MySQL was to Oracle DB coming along in that space any time soon.

    --
    THL phish sticks
  2. is it even RESTful? by UnanimousCoward · · Score: 3, Informative

    In taking a quick look a the standard, it doesn't even look RESTful. For example:

    http://<mapservice-url>/layers

    Returns deep copies of all layers and tables as opposed to a list of IDs. Then:

    http://<featureservice-url>/<layerId>

    Returns a deep copy of a particular layer/table.

    How about http://<something>/layers returning a list of layers/tables and http://<something>/layers/{id} returning the particular table/layer? The whole /object and /object/{id} paradigm is missing. And that's just about GET. Regardless 800-lbs gorilla arguments against this "standard," I'd be more inclined to reject it due to its lack of adherence to standards.

    --
    Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
  3. MSOOXML by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ESRI would have gotten away with it if they had just taken the Microsoft path of stuffing the committees with Yes-men. I'm sure the OGC procedures would have been completely defenseless against this and the OGC management would have been overjoyed to collect $10k per temporary yes-man.

  4. Re:Lesson learned by TeXMaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ok, serious questions here. Are there _technical_ reasons for hating GRASS? It does have a butt-ugly UI, but it's extremely flexible, extensible and it's designed with a Unix-like philosophy in mind, with a collection of tools that do individual things but are well integrated with each other. I'm not saying it's perfect, but then again neither is ArcGIS.

    --
    "I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
  5. Re:Lesson learned by westyvw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thats because you don't need all of that. PostGIS --> Geoserver --> Web page. Need a GUI? Qgis. Analysis happens at the database level, just like any other query.