GIS (data) Browser

Long ago, ESRI There is a product named "..." and "arcexplorer.

This Explorer is not another explorer, and arcexplorer is not popular nowArcGIS Explorer. At that time, it seems that there was no such thing as ArcGIS, and some were ArcInfo, ArcView, Mo, the good old days.GIS , It will not be so depressing, so you can only blame yourself for not catching up with good time.

Back to the beginning, arcexplorer is nothing more than an esri gis data.Browser (GIS data viewer), that is, you can view your GIS data through this stuff, and this stuff is free of charge. At that time, GIS was often used to ultimatelyMap And exist.

No
After a long time, we had ArcGIS. This brand-new GIS stuff brought a lot of new things, one of which was ArcGIS.
Reader. There are many readers in the world, but there are only one reader and one reader. The most famous one is acrobat.
Reader. Therefore, ESRI's ambition is as big as Adobe's, and he wants
Reader is a standard in the GIS industry. But no one will guess the end of the story.

Acrobat Reader is industry standard, connectedMicrosoft Uncle Bill wants to challenge things, but ArcGIS reader is left empty. Although this stuff is very good and can be released free of charge through the control version developed by AO, ESRI only saw the beginning of the story, but did not think of the end of the story, reader has been no one to use.

After many years, someone finally came to the GIS pool, one of which was calledGoogle And a Google Earth, so some people say that GIS can still be like this. Because in addition3D None of the people in the circle have ever seen similar things, so sometimes Luoyang has a narrow bandwidth and is busy searching for a home on the Internet. So there isOpen Source WorldWind is known to all, with Google Earth's suicide hand ArcGIS Explorer.

Some people gradually began to speculate on the GIS browser. I don't know if ESRI will look up and sigh "my reader ".

So, does our industry also need a GIS browser or a GIS Data Browser? The former is similarWeb The browser is the IE, which is similar to Acrobat Reader.

The answer must be "Death." before the death, bloggers began to predict candidates.

The
The first character is, of course, the Google Earth, which is disturbing and boring. But Google
The earth problem mainly comes down to 2 points. The first is that in principle, the free use of Google is only for non-commercial purposes, unlike arcobat.
Reader permission, which can be used for any purpose; second, Google
The Earth-compatible data format is limited. Currently, only your own kml is supported. The charged version requires 400 knives. For a reader or browser, it must be too expensive. Therefore, if Google wants
It is a long way to develop things into IE or reader in the GIS industry.

WhileAgX (ArcGIS
Explorer), ESRI's policy on this thing has been erratic, although ESRI is getting older. Initially, Google
The Earth killer decided to compete with Ge, and later put the power into ArcGIS 9.2, especially ArcGIS Server
In 9.2, AgX has also become a derivative of server. Most seriously, it is said that the core of AgX is geofusion. Joel said that reuse is only effective for peripheral products and core things
It must be the company's own stuff. Therefore, ESRI should do a good job of AgX, either develop a set of core, or buy geofusion. Then, we need determination, determination, and determination.

So, the poor ArcGIS reader, except ESRI, does not know how many people know this stuff. While ArcGIS 9.2 finally outputs different layers as different layers in the PDF when outputting the PDF. Does ESRI give up on itself.

When we are used to switching to the Earth, who still like to see flat maps that do not know where it is, that is, from luxury to luxury, and vice versa, it is now the Internet era, the electronic age is not the printing age. Therefore, a ball that can be rotated will be necessary for browsers.

However, the GIS or spatial data industry needs a language similar to HTML, and kml may be the best candidate, but there are still many problems. The implication is that the GIS application runs on a browser similar to IE, the ultimate ideal or the wolf ambition for some people!

So what is the result?

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