Does GeoEvent work with Fleetmatics?

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09-23-2016 08:40 AM
ShawnHibbs
New Contributor III

We are currently using Fleetmatics to track our field vehicles and would like to integrate this into our web maps. They have their own API that allows real time tracking so I figured that it would work with the geoevent extension. However, after talking with our fleetmatics rep they said it was not possible. They also didn't know what ESRI was either so I am a little bit skeptical. Just want to reach out and see if anyone has looked into using this particular software with the extension before?

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MarkBramer
Occasional Contributor II

Anything's possible.  I know, I know, you just rolled your eyes, but hear me out.

The key here is to not think of the vendors' ability or non-ability to work directly with GeoEvent.  Unless the vendor, or an otherwise interested party, creates the GeoEvent connectors, it's impossible for the Esri GeoEvent team to make and maintain a connector for every possible vendor - it's just not a realistic development and maintenance feasibility.

So then what's the key?  The key is to find out lower level details about these vendors' APIs and data formats.  How does a developer or integrator communicate with the vendors' products/APIs - HTTP?  TCP?  Web socket?  UDP?  What is the format of the actual data?  Comma-separated fields? Tab-separated fields?  XML?  JSON?

GeoEvent ships with native support for a bunch of industry standard transport mechanisms (HTTP, TCP, UDP, Web socket, etc) as well as native support for a a bunch of data formats (CSV, JSON, etc).  If a vendor's connector doesn't exist natively (which is most likely the case), but you find out their API is REST-based and returns tab-separated data, then you could "marry-up" the HTTP transport with the Text adapter and make a new GeoEvent connector with no development required.  

There are possibilities to integrate vendors' products APIs with GeoEvent, but I won't go into it here.  Anybody interested in hearing more can contact me if desired.

I hope this helps clarify some things.

Mark Bramer