GIS Web Services
Web Services are programs that run on a web server, but their results are fed back to a
calling program elsewhere on the Internet. Web Services are only of interest to
application developers. Application developers that use web services are well acquainted
with terms like "consume", "WSDL", "SOAP", "interfaced object", and "RPC".
Out-of-the-box geocoding from ESRI products does not meet all of Orem's
geocoding needs. We needed a solution that would geocode addresses from desktop and web
programs the same way. Being a Utah city, we faced many of the same problems other Utah
entities face when geocoding addresses: sometimes the street name is placed before the
house number, sometimes streets have more than one name, and sometimes we have address
coordinates that don't match any street at all.
Using the IOremGeocoder interface has allowed all of our GIS
applications to plot addresses under all the above circumstances. A program that wishes
to geocode in this manner merely needs to be connected to the Internet to receive results.
The IOremGeocoder interface has only one method: GeocodeOremAddress. It returns a point
object in NAD27 Utah Central coordinates.
At this time, all of our on-line Interactive Maps use this web service
to geocode when the user clicks the "Zoom to Address" button. Most of our In-House GIS
Applications and Extensions use it, too.
This web service actually consumes the OremGeocoder service to function.
The IAddressInOremPolygon interface has one method: AddressInWhat. It takes an address, a service name, a layer name, and a field name, and
returns a variant indicating the polygon that the address is in.