The REST API offers developers a RESTful interface into Esri Business Analyst's rich dataset and powerful analysis capabilities. The REST API is organized into two groups of tasks: Analysis Tasks and Utility Tasks.
Analysis Tasks are powerful workflows that can be used to create trade/service areas and analyze the underlying demographics and market characteristics of the population within these areas. These Analysis Tasks are supplemented by the use of the Utility Tasks.
| Benchmark Report | Create a comparative report which rapidly benchmarks two or more trade/service areas on selected volumetric data. This data consists of numerous demographic and marketing variables of interest to businesses, agencies and organizations. |
|---|---|
| Drive Time | Create drive time or drive distance-based trade/service areas, get mappable representations of these areas, and summarize their underlying demographics and market characteristics with a library of reports. |
| Simple Rings | Create ring-based trade/service areas, get mappable representations of these areas, and summarize their underlying demographics and market characteristics with a library of reports. |
| Summary Reports | Create Summary Reports for custom trade/service areas, get mappable representations of these areas and named geographic locations, and summarize their underlying demographics and market characteristics with a library of reports. |
All Analysis Tasks share some parameters.
One important parameter that is shared between all Analysis Tasks is the TaskOutputType parameter. This parameter requires an instance of TaskOutputTypeArray as its parameter value. The TaskOutputTypeArray is a list of TaskOutputTypes and is used to specify the analysis operations that will execute on the server. By default, all Analysis Tasks will generate Summary Reports (the GetReport TaskOutputType). If no other analysis operations need to be run concurrently and the default parameter value is acceptable, the TaskOutputType parameter value does not need to be specified.
Refer to the individual documentation for each REST endpoint for more specific information.
All Analysis Tasks have the capability of producing a response which can consist of a serialized representation of a geographic Feature Class (FeatureSet), a set of Summary Reports, and map imagery. All of these analysis results can be delivered to the requesting client in a single response described as an instance of TaskResultOutput. This response is compatible with ArcGIS Server's mapping APIs and can be requested in the platform-independent data interchange formats of JSON, PJSON, or HTML. This facilitates cross-platform development and integration with legacy systems, services, and data.
As discussed in Output Formats, do not confuse the REST API response formats with the TaskResultOutput data type. An instance of TaskResultOutput packages and describes the REST API analysis result in the response format specified in the f parameter value in the original request.
Refer to the individual documentation for each REST endpoint for more specific information.