Ease of Use

Like many application we work on, the end-users for this system are not "GIS experts", and they have no desire to become "GIS Experts". Thus it was very important that the system be intuitive. The application interfaces use the terminiology the end users are familliar with.

Focused Tools

Creating a very focused application helps ensure that the system is easy to use. By not trying to be all things to all users" the development effort was put into a small set of tools which are both easy to use, and very fast.

High-Performance

Since the release of Google Maps, end user expectations for web-based mapping application are very high. And in a high-energy environment like an emergency response operations center, time is of the essence. This system utilizes map caches for the majority of the data sets, thus making most map interactions nearly instantaneous. Analytical operations utilize the ArcGIS Server SOAP API which is also extremely responsive.

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Design Phase

The design phase of this project focused on the creation of wireframes for the system. These gave MARC a better feel for how the system would look, as well as how the workflows would be implemented.

Agile Development

Through the development process, the team released the software to the client every two weeks. This transparency during development ensured that both the team and our clients knew exactly what was being built, and that it was meeting the actual needs of the users. Towards the end of the project, the bi-weekly deployments were pushed to the client's testing environment to help trouble shoot any issues that were unique to their environment.

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ASP.NET Model View Controller

The ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) framework is designed from the ground up to address two requirements for Web 2.0 application: compatibility with Ajax style development, and the ability to leverage unit testing througought the application.

ArcGIS Server

The application itself involves interrogation of a linear referencing system on a state-wide road network. While not natively exposed through the SOAP or .NET API's, ArcGIS Server's flexibility enabled the team to create high-performance server-side routines which were then exposed via web services. These services were consumed by the ASP.NET MVC application, which inturn exposed these functions to the application as JSON web services. The result is an extremely high-performance application.

Dojo Toolkit

The Dojo Toolkit is a comprehensive javascript application framework that can be used to build rich client application in the browser. The ESRI Javascript API is built on the Dojo Toolkit, so it makes sense to build the application's interace usign this same framework.