Leveraging GIS and Blackberry Investments Using Freeance View

Here at the Port of San Diego we have made substantial investments in our Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), Blackberry devices and ArcGIS Server. Freeance View, the free version of Freeance’s Mobile suite, allows us to leverage these investments. This software enables our Port employees access to our internal GIS resources on their Blackberrys. There are certainly pro and cons to this integration effort.

Pros-

• Freeance Software is dead easy to implement. No extra classes or programming needed. The server side work took about an hour. There was no special configuration needed on our BES
• Security and network configuration is already fully configured. There was no talk about punching holes or implementing security for our services.

Cons-

• Blackberrys deployed at the Port 1) have small screens 2) no touch screen and 3) no integrated GPS. This might be fine for email, but it is a sub-par environment to work with GIS data.

Currently this product is in development; meaning we don’t guarantee it’s full functionality 24×7. Depending upon feedback from our users we might deploy it as a production tool. In the video below we show how to 1) download Freeance View 2) configure the software to use our development GIS resources and 3) navigate the map to show how an easement cuts across a parcel.

See the links below, if you are interested in trying out this product on the Blackberry simulator used in the video.

The Blackberry emulator/simulator used in the video can be downloaded from the link below
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/resources/simulators.jsp

You will also need BlackBerry Email and MDS Services Simulator
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/devtoolsdownloads.jsp

MostInterestingArticleIHaveReadInAWhile Zen

About these ads

Tags: ArcGIS Server, Blackberry, Blackberry Enterprise Server, emulator, Freeance Mobile, Freeance View, geofence, RIM, simulator