topic Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org? in ArcGIS Viewer for Silverlight Questions

Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

BugPie — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:03:29 GMT

We are looking to develop a new ArcServer site to replace our organizations IMS. There are a few key functionalities that are needed and listed below. We do have access to a developer who is very well rounded. However, we are not able to utilize too much of his time for this project, and we need this up by the end of this year. Our research shows that the silverlight viewer would be the best option for us to use in order to make a few customizations but also have an out of the box viewer ready to use. Here is a short list of major requirements. There are 13 map services that we need to utilize within our site.

A search box that will search two feature classes within our SDE for the entered project number. When searched the viewer will pan and zoom to this project at specific scale placing definition queries on the sites searched for.

The viewer will change projection based on what UTM the project site is located in. The default projection for each service will be NAD83 Meters, Albers Equal Area Conic

The ability to select one of the 13 map services using a button or drop down. Which are all utilizing both SDE features as well as esri basemaps, WMS data from USFW as well as imagery from SDDS and esri basemaps.

Print a map service to a specific template at two different scales. Dynamically filling in text and info within the map service specific template using the data in our SDE.

HTML Pop up's for identifying purposes. And an assortment of other built in arcmap tools.

In general, does the silverlight viewer allow us to make these customizations? What is the best way to mash up our 13 services into one website like our current IMS has, bring in some esri basemaps to use (USA Topo, Street) and get each service to print in a certain template. I'm not a developer so I would like to hear an opinion on which way I should point our developer towards. We have already setup a test ArcServer Site. We have 4 of 13 map services created for the most part. We have not been able to add in the basemap data from esri yet and are hoping this viewer will allow us to do so. Community, what do you think?

Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

BugPie — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 18:38:44 GMT

Anyone have any insight at all? Can somone point me towards a forum or discussion where I could post this, if this is the wrong place?

Thanks!

Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

AnthonyGiles — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 18:51:59 GMT

Collin,

The sample flex or silverlight viewers should be able to satisfy your requirements. Personally I use the flex viewer as the browsers I target do not have silverlight installed. There are plenty of examples of widgets in the resource centre that do not require any programming skills, see,

http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/flex/gallery.html

There are also samples for silverlight, but not as many

http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapps/silverlightviewer/gallery.html

The choice is really up to you but think you do need to think about the client browser you are serving to. Silverlight requires silverlight on the client, flex requires the flash plugin,

Hope this helps

Regards

Anthony

PS For viewer questions you will be better off posting to the viewer forums:

Flex:

http://forums.arcgis.com/forums/111-ArcGIS-Viewer-for-Flex

Silverlight:

http://forums.arcgis.com/forums/211-ArcGIS-Viewer-for-Silverlight

Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

BugPie — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:44:39 GMT

Thank you Anthony! These are just the little things I was hoping to get from the crowd that I did not anticipate. Thanks for the heads up on posting to those specific forums.

If anyone had additional advice I would love to hear what else is out there.

Cheers

Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

DerekLaw — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:29:33 GMT

Hi Collin,

FYI, this ArcUser article discusses the different configurable client viewers options currently available for ArcGIS for Server:

Creating Custom Web Mapping Applications without Programming

You also may want to watch this FREE live training seminar,

Introduction to ArcGIS Viewer for Silverlight

Hope this helps,

Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

BugPie — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:42:00 GMT

Hey Derek,

Thank you for these links. These are in fact very helpful in our research.

Cheers!

Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

YurongTan — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:00:20 GMT

If you have not made the decision yet, here is my two cents, though I am not a guru with Silverlight:
I walked into this place mainly because Silverlight is easy to be deployed and quick to start with applications, especially with the Viewer and the pre-cooked templates that are very useful to kick start your map showing. However, when the first round of apps are out and you would like to take it a little bit further, here is my shares.

1. Silverlight is not something that makes your applications to interact seamlessly with your corporate databases (e.g. SQL server DB's) without additional steps. For instance, I would like to have a second tier popup (link) that will show additional information for some of the items in the original popup and the additional information is NOT part of the layer attributes, but in a SQL server database, this turns out to be a challenge as SL by design does not support SQL server connections. Second, items like textblock, etc. inside a popup (MapTip) is insulated from your app and therefore, attemps to juice up the appearance of the popup contents (e.g. make a popup more readable) through programming will be difficult (doable, but very limitted).

2. You can write codes that work exactly the way you want, but when the individual pierces are boundled together to make it a whole, there could be some hickups (known and unknown). One instance is the map legend control (I use it for layer display control on/off and legend info/symbology). No doubt tech support is very helpful and often go the extra miles to provide workarounds, but not always and without delays.

3. Silverlight focuses primarily on presentation and it is relatively "young" as compared to others. Keep in mind that "presentation" is a big part of any maps or graphics and I hope it will be made a much well-round platform down the road. If you set your eyes on the future, this is a good warm up process.

Re: Need Advice. Is silverlight viewer right for our Org?

PietaSwanepoel2 — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:43:31 GMT

It will also depend on the skill set you have available to you. To develop add-ins in silverlight you have to know silverlight. Using the viewer and configuring it doesn't require any programming skills. Same applies to flex or javascript.

Out of the box: Flex is better. There are for more add-ins (widgets) available from the user community than for the silverlight viewer
Also more likely to find help easier. But if you know how it is possible to write code to do most things

As per previous posts, your own framework might also be an option but will have to be maintained by someone that knows how. At least the ArcGIS Viewers provide a defined framework and any code that was written against it (complies to the rules of framework) should work. You might consider getting outside help especially for the custom add-ins