The demand for disconnected GIS comes directly as a result of the new freedoms afforded by mobility. Any GIS user working out of the office on laptop, smartphone or tablet will find themselves from time to time with none, or poor Internet connectivity. In these situations what do you do if you want to view your maps, and map layers, maybe edit this data? Unless the GIS application you are using has disconnected capabilities built in …. you will be twiddling your thumbs!
In our view all GIS applications should potentially work when disconnected or poorly connected. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting an age for your data to load or be told “you have no Internet connection”. We made it our top priority to find a way to provide GIS users disconnected capabilities. Today, any GIS application we build works in both online and offline modes.
Disconnected GIS Made Easy
GIS is complicated. Disconnected GIS adds more complexity. So why title this blog post ‘Disconnected GIS Made Easy’? Because the approach we have taken hides the complexity. This fits with our goal to provide GIS powered solutions which run anywhere, anytime, on any device and are use-able by all. Let’s focus on the anywhere part of this goal statement. In technical terms, we have built a Javascript library which handles offline.
As the diagram above shows, our DisconnectedJS library handles all the offline pieces. Connecting to either ArcGIS Server or ArcGIS Online, the library copies both base map tiles and feature layers to a database on the mobile device. Should a user move into an area with poor or no Internet connectivity, DisconnectedJS provides access to this local map data. DisconnectedJS not only works with GIS data, it will also store and provide access to any custom data. Maybe you have an in-house business system. Using DisconnectedJS and our custom connectors we can pull data from your non-GIS system and store it locally. Not only does this provide disconnected access, it also allow us to integrate ArcGIS with your business critical data, providing a new level of insight.
See the library in action in the disconnected editing demo shown below:
Not only are we building GIS applications using DisconnectedJS, but your developers can take advantage of our new library to build disconnected capabilities into your applications. Contact us on 801-733-0723 for more information.
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