Guess I should have looked at wikipedia *before* I sent the message. Turns out the requests are in a format called (surprise!) ArcXML. Full specs are here: http://downloads.esri.com/support/documentation/ims_/Support_files/arcxmlguide.htm
So I guess the main question is: Is anyone already familiar with this format and/or would there be much demand in the OSM community for something that uses it? Toby On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Toby Murray <toby.mur...@gmail.com> wrote: > My county uses ArcIMS to serve up their GIS data. I have received > permission to use their 6" resolution aerial photos for tracing things > in OSM and when asked about accessing the data, I was pointed at the > ArcExplorer software. Now I just need to figure out how to use it. It > seems like ArcExplorer itself is a pretty dumb client that just > displays images it gets from the server. > > I did a packet capture while loading some data into ArcExplorer and it > looks like it is a pretty simple protocol. The client sends an XML > document specifying an <ENVELOPE> element with a bounding box > (although I'm not sure what the units are in... it doesn't look like > lat/long) as well as tags indicating which layers it wants. The server > renders the request and then sends back a response in XML with an > output URL tag that specifies a .jpg that the client then downloads > and displays. All layers do appear to be pre-rendered into a single > flat image so getting shape files out of it doesn't seem possible. > > Now, my county DOES have an FTP server where I can probably get access > to the raw data however getting access to it will require more begging > on my part. Not that I have a huge problem with that... but talking > with others on IRC, it sounds like ArcIMS is a fairly popular product > for city/county GIS systems. So I was wondering if anyone already > knows more about it and if there is a good way to get OSM-usable > images and/or data out of it without FTP access. If not, would it be > worth it for me to look at this in more detail? The most spectacular > outcome I could see would be a JOSM plugin that lets you give it an > ArcIMS server URL and then acts like the WMS plugin to download > background images. > > Thoughts? > > Toby > _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us