Application Interoperability

Developing applications that reference and use the same Web Map Services that are available to USDA staff on their desktop is one way of assuring a common cartographic representation of on-screen data and a common "look and feel" for applications.

Applications can access the images and query the underlying data by using ArcXML, ESRI's extensible markup language (XML) specification. References on developing web mapping applications, including the three listed below, can be downloaded from ESRI's ArcIMS Documentation web site.

• ArcXML Reference Guide: describes ArcXML, ESRI's extensible markup language (XML) specification for publishing maps, data, and metadata. It provides a complete list of ArcXML elements with their parameters and valid values.
• ArcXML Programmer's Guide: ArcXML is designed as the protocol for data exchange between the ArcIMS Spatial Server, Application Server, and Application Server Connectors. This online reference provides an overview of how to use ArcXML and a complete reference to all ArcXML elements.
• Customizing ArcIMS : These books explain the foundation for customizing the HTML Viewer, the Java Viewer, and the Metadata Explorer, three Web-based applications that come with ArcIMS.

Information on application interoperability is available from ESRIs Interoperability and Standards web site and from the Open GIS Consortium (OGC).

It is possible to implement an OGC standard Web Map Service (WMS) interface to ArcIMS services. The WMS interface provides a translation engine that takes in OGC-standard WMS (GetMap, GetCapabilities) requests and reforms them into Arc Extensible Markup Language (ArcXML) requests that are forwarded to the published Map Services.

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