At the FOSS4G Conference in Barcelona, Spain, today, Esri announced the release of the GeoServices REST Specification. This open specification provides a standard way for Web clients to communicate with geographic information system (GIS) servers through Representational State Transfer (REST) technology. The specification has been opened such that developers can expose the GeoServices API request structure from ArcGIS Server and other non-Esri, back-end GIS servers or processors.

"In many ways, by releasing the GeoServices REST Specification as open technology, Esri is repeating what it did in the early '90s, releasing shapefiles as an open data format," explains Dr. Satish Sankaran, Esri product manager for interoperability and standards. "This specification encapsulates a strong platform that allows developers to create services that support rich GIS Web applications and allows geospatial services to be embedded into anything on the Web, including commercial off-the-shelf products, open source, and even mashups. The GeoServices REST Specification helps make all GIS data more open and interoperable on the Web."

The GeoServices REST Specification for a server implementation is a proven specification that has been widely deployed and exercised in the field and exposes server-side resources to a broad range of clients and applications. The JSON-based, REST-full specification makes the server instantly usable by thousands of developers working in popular client-side development environments with the ArcGIS Web mapping APIs for JavaScript, Flex, Silverlight, iOS, and Android, all of which are powered by the GeoServices REST Specification.

To download the GeoServices REST Specification, visit www.esri.com/opengeoservices.

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Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

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Matthew DeMeritt, Esri
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