ShareGIS

ShareGIS is a NYS ITS Geospatial Services initiative to build an enterprise GIS services infrastructure for all of New York and bring you the data and expertise that has been tirelessly curated by Geospatial Service program areas.  Our expertise in the elements of data generation, improvement, and integration make NYS GIS data available and easy to use and reduces the barriers to entry of GIS by providing authoritative data services.

The founding principal behind ShareGIS is that we have a wealth of data that should be easily discovered and accessed through authoritative sources.  This data is uploaded to the ShareGIS server environment and made available to the public via ESRI REST Endpoints.

Over the past few years, Geospatial Services has been working to publicly serve over 15TB of framework data in an effort to support the day to day needs of NYS government agencies, businesses, academic institutions, and non-profits alike. 

Below you will find an introduction to ShareGIS offerings as well as useful documents links and pages on data sectors and activities.  You will also find a series of links connecting you to the various program areas and web services offered and maintained by NYS Geospatial Services. 

What is a Web Service?

Web services represent remote data or GIS layers that the user isn't required to download or maintain on their machine.  They are resources that take the burdens of data creation, maintenance, and updates off the user, but which can easily be connected to with GIS software or applications.  For NYS Geospatial Services, web services represent framework data for users to combine with their business data to enhance analyses.

The catalog of ShareGIS hosted services can be accessed through the Geospatial Services instance of ArcGIS HUB, or via ESRI REST endpoints.  Both options provide access to data like Building Footprints, Legislative Boundaries, Tax Parcel Boundaries, Streets, and Orthoimagery, as well as data from partnering NYS agencies.  Additionally, both web service resources include access to the Geospatial Services geocoding service which provides the most accurate address geocoder for the State.

These services are always available, free of charge to all users, and are updated frequently to ensure the best data is available for all of New York State.  Please Note: End users of a service who have a very large application user base or large batch processes should alert the Streets and Addresses program area, so clients can be kept advised of information about changes and updates.

Connect to the Geospatial Services ArcGIS HUB Instance to explore available web services,

 Search the Geospatial services Catalog of web Services 

or connect to the ShareGIS REST Endpoint page to interact with web services. Please note that instructions for popular methods of interacting with REST endpoints are contained in the documentation section below. 

REST Endpoints for Web Services

Map Services vs. Feature Services

The ShareGIS catalog of web services provides map, feature, and geocoding services.  While geocoding services are used to determine address coordinates, map and feature services are used to display data in a GIS software or coding environment.

The primary difference between a feature service and a map service is that a feature service has the data's feature access enabled, meaning users can interact with the data, sub setting, exporting and symbolizing features.  Because of this, a feature service can be more useful in a GIS software as it exposes the geometry, attributes, and symbol information for vector features and is appropriate for displaying, querying, and editing business data on top of web basemaps. 

In comparison, a map service is often used as a cached map service where the map service provides a map image layer pre-symbolized at the server-side.  Map services do provide the fastest way to serve maps on the web but the symbology in that cached map service cannot be changed by the client.

ArcMap and ArcPro

ArcMap and ArcPro have conventional methods of connecting to web services.  Each software allows the user to connect to an ESRI ArcGIS Server through the ArcCatalog.  Users can select "Add ArcGIS Server" through ArcCatalog and add in webservices through the services REST endpoint.

Supporting documentation for adding a web service in ArcMap

Supporting documentation for adding a web service in ArcPro

QGIS

QGIS is a user-friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows and Android and supports numerous vector, raster, and database formats and functionalities.

Connecting to ArcGIS web services is achieved through toolbars and requires a URL pointing to your desired server.  In recent years the demand for connecting to ESRI ArcServer hosted web services grew to the point that a direct path of...

Layer --> Add Layer --> Add ArcGIS --> Add ArcGIS Feature Service Layer

was created.

Supporting documentation for adding a web service in QGIS

JavaScript and HTML

In addition to conventional methods of connecting to web services, users can also add web services to custom JavaScript and html documents/applications.  While methods will vary, the easiest approach is to use popular ESRI APIs or through popular open-source JavaScript libraries like Leaflet.

Supporting documentation for adding a web service in JavaScript