Aftermarket Tapestry Segmentation for Automobiles or, ArcWeb Services and the Master/Slave Dialectic.

By now everyone has seen the magnificence that is ArcWeb Explorer by ESRI. Pretty darn impressive. ArcWeb Explorer is the Flex-based client for ArcWeb Services — which is basically like your average map mashup system on steroids.

They've made it incredibly easy to add your own data to it, either through the JavaScript API or the Flex API, or through their hosted services. It's almost magic the way it takes the data or imagery from your $10k - $20k+ ESRI ArcIMS or ArcGIS Server and sends it to any ArcWeb Explorer clients requesting it. ArcWeb Explorer is free, but ESRI charges a very minimal per-access charge to provide the service.

If you're like me, you're thinking, "I gotta get me some of that magic!"

You see, ESRI charges $1250 for a block of 100,000 credits for ArcWeb Services. Each time a client makes a request to the ArcWeb Services, um, service you've set up, a corresponding number of credits are deducted from your account. But then, if you're like me, employed by a municipality that continues to dump tens of thousands of dollars into ESRI's pockets every year or so for desktop and server software, you're probably thinking the appropriate number of credits that should be deducted IS ZERO!

I might think differently if they included anything close to the functionality of the ArcWeb Services clients with ArcIMS or ArcGIS Server. But no, we get what was whiz-bang cool-tech when Google Maps introduced it. Then again ArcWeb Explorer doesn't even have some of the UI functionality that Google Maps provides FOR FREE.

No, I'm not bitter, I'm just angry, as the proxy for a master who is enslaved by Mr. Dangermond.
But what Jack is only recently pushing aside the throngs of fawning fans to figure out (yes, I literally thought he was a religious figure the way the attendees were bringing there children to see him at the Annual User Conference this year), is that we slaves can be beaten by more than one master. And yes, he does, in fact, actually kiss the babies and pose for photos—in between Pope-style hand-wave blessing gestures.

But then again, if I owned a company with SEVERAL hundred THOUSAND customers, most of whom are coughing up tens of thousands of dollars every so many months for software licenses, and invented GIS back in '69 while the other kids were getting stoned, I just might be posing for photos and kissing the babies too. Anyway, I digress.

Credit Cost Per Service it says, and invites you to sort the information by column by clicking on the column heading. It's just so typical, though, it doesn't work. I click on "Cost", and it resorts to 3, 6, 4, 4, 1, 2, 0.1, 1, ... despite the downward "sorted-by" arrow appearing in the Cost column header. Probably my browser, what with it's standards compliance screwing things up. Those numbers, you see, are the number of credits that you get dinged for each particular type of access. For example, here in the U.S., it costs 1 credit to locate a congressional district by spatial query. Same goes for finding an address.

Start getting fancy with Address data or looking for business listings within a geographic area, though, and it's gonna cost you 2 credits. Even accessing gov't supplied TIGER data from 2000 (the T in TIGER stands for "crappy") is 1 credit. Mind you that is PER CLICK in the interface.

Just count how many clicks you do in the Google Maps interface next time you figure out how far it is to Vegas. Multiply that by a factor of 1.5 and you've got a fair estimate of how many requests you'd have made to ArcWeb Services. But wait, there's more! Make a request for demographic data involving such interesting topics as "Automotive Aftermarket Expenditures" and "Tapestry Segmentation Area Profile" and you're really gonna pay -- 2000 and 3856 credits respectively.

At a cost basis of 1.25 cents per credit, figuring out how segmented the tapestry is near people in your town who buy a lot of spinners for their Escalades is going to cost you no less than $7.32 a click.

Now let's say that you deploy this service for your customers -- all 12 enthusiasts of Aftermarket Tapestry Segmentation for Automobiles. Each one uses the service you've set up, and attempts to locate the highest tapestry segmentation area within five miles of a Kragen Auto Parts Store. Each one clicks a conservative twelve times. We'll add another ten clicks, being exceptionally kind, for misclicks and typos.

Add it up and what seemed exorbitant pricing for that tapestry headliner you've always wanted, suddenly wasn't so bad at all.12 users + 1 owner (testing) = 13; times 12 clicks = 156 clicks; plus ten clicks = 166; times $7.32 = $1215.12.

Right there, in one swell foop you've managed to blow through an entire allotment of magical ArcWeb Services credits, and managed to help Mr. Dangermond purchase the "daytime" mink stole his wife has been begging for.

The only thing better than getting folks to drink the KoolAid, is getting them to buy the KoolAid, then pay you to serve it to them, by the sip.

Right there, you can see why so many municipalities are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars developing custom clients of one sort or another (usually crappy), rather than spend tens of thousands, potentially, every month to use a service that simply supplies people with data coming from their own servers anyway. Go a bit further down that road (1-2 credits) and you'll soon find an awful lot less difference between the $20k GIS Server and the free and open-source GIS Server (with a few grand for support every year).

So, no thank you Mr. Dangermond. That's some awful tasty looking KoolAid, but I think I'm just gonna pour a glass of this delicious iced tea I made this morning. Sure, it don't have any dancing pitchers on the package, but it's not only a whole lot cheaper, I can drink as much of it as I want, it's healthier, and if I dribble it down the front of my shirt, I am far, far less likely to require an expert from the Tapestry Segmentation community to remedy the situation, thus saving about $75 if I was to look for one with ArcWeb Services.

Nice mink stole, though, Mrs. Dangermond. Would you take a photo with my camera while your husband kisses my baby?

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POSTSCRIPT: Flash forward a few months... ArcWebServices died, only to be (kind of) reborn in the Flex API for ArcGIS Server (patience...). Go Jack Go! In fact, I'm so sold on The New Jack™ (Dangermond... or rather, his company), my wife and I have been trying to get pregnant in time to get some family photos at the User Conference.

No, the problem wasn't at all the technology, in my opinion (what else did you expect to read on MY blog), it was the service-only aspect of it. For some strange reason, people tend to want free and easy access to their own data. Sorry, I know AWS was painful, but I understand it provided a framework for ESRI Consulting to build off of, and the Server Flex API benefits.

I'm sold. In fact, I'm predicting Mrs. Dangermond will be sporting a new-and-improved GPS-enabled (multi-constellation, of course) mink stole this season with the new municipal pricing scheme and user-friendly (and capable) client APIs for Server.