We are building up an application to collect map services from different owner. One of our big questions at the moment is how we can merge various map services from different institutions or municipalities into one map service.
The sources are using different software but we can always depend on international standards.
To give you an example:
- Every municipality collects it's own building data.
- Every municipality publishes it's building data set as a map service
- We would like to combine all of these map services into one service
- The end user just has to add one map service into his system to have a look at all the buildings of all municipalities
- The user should be able to request (identify function) background data from each building
The central application is build on ESRI products, but we can add extra software to merge the map services.
I tried to find a solution with GeoServer, since I do not have a much experience in ESRI. But until now I did not find a proper way to do it.
Best Answer
If the services being returned are all from ArcGIS Server (esri), why not just build a web application (JavaScript API?) to bring all them together. I don't see the need or value gained by ingesting them into your own server and re hosting them that way.
I'd generally stay away from cascading services. What happens if one of the services you've ingested fails to load into your service? Will the service you're serving continuing to work, or will it time out as it waits for the non-responding service, creating a poor user experience. If you combine the services at the web application level and one has timed out, you'll still draw all the other layers (services). Plus the overhead you've added, a service serving services. It might not be much, but again I dont see the value gained by cascading.
If this answer misses the mark, can you add more information about the client your users will be using and the reason why?