Abstract
The development of web applications that manipulate geo-referenced information is often supported by Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), allowing a fast development cycle for high quality applications. APIs can be used by programmers with different expertise levels and choosing an adequate API may have a dramatic impact on the productivity achieved by those programmers. Our goal is to compare maps APIs with respect to their usability. We compare three different APIs: the Google Maps JavaScript API, the ArcGIS API for JavaScript, and the OpenLayers JavaScript Mapping Library. Our comparison is supported by a set of software metrics and is performed in two orthogonal ways: the comparison of three implementations of the same system prototype, each using one of the APIs under scrutiny; the comparison of the APIs specifications. The main results of the study are related to the size of the APIs, with the Google API being significantly smaller than the others.
| Original language | Unknown |
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| Title of host publication | AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science |
| Pages | 1-13 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2013 |
| Event | 16th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science (AGILE 2013) - Duration: 1 Jan 2013 → … |
Conference
| Conference | 16th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science (AGILE 2013) |
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| Period | 1/01/13 → … |