@conference {5720, title = {A Comparison of Maps Application Programming Interfaces}, booktitle = {16th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science, AGILE 2013}, year = {2013}, month = {May 14-17}, address = {Leuven, Belgium}, 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.

}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3485}, attachments = {https://docentes.fct.unl.pt/sites/default/files/mgoul/files/agile2013fernandesetalcameraready.pdf}, author = {Fernandes, Ana Isabel and Goul{\~a}o, Miguel and Armanda Rodrigues,} }