Comments on: Jack’s answers to the 2007 UC Q&A

By: Mallikarjun

Mallikarjun — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:27:34 +0000

Hi, can any one help me out where should i get the examples on accessing image server using c#

By: Preconference Questions And Answers, ESRI International User Conference, 2007 : scrappad

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:09:52 +0000

[...] it’s been made public and comments are flying in(http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2007/06/11/jacks-answers-to-the-2007-uc-qa/), talking about the preconference questions that have been [...]

By: a consultant

a consultant — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 21:14:07 +0000

Q: Why is ESRI pushing ArcGIS Server so aggressively?

Let me add some perspective on this. A small client, with limited resources, is entering the geospatial world with two 7 Mb pgdb files (yes, 14 M-M-Megs). A handful of people sitting in the same office will occasionally need to view these files along with local base layers. There is one newly hired GIS Tech. They have no intention of putting anything on the internet.

ESRIâ€™s recommended software solution was ArcGIS Server Workgroup/Standard and concurrent licenses of ArcEditor and ArcView. My client was bamboozled into the purchase before I knew about it. I hit the roof because they are still in the paper/digital conversion phase.

That is aggressive marketing!

By: Cam W.

Cam W. — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:54:59 +0000

@ Cellulose:

I should stop posting so damn late at night. As soon as I thought about it a little longer I realized that someone was going to point to the â€œsemantic webâ€ as an example.

Xindice is good example, but I would argue it’s been a around for longer that 5 years (but really I pulled that number out of the air). I don’t recall in my very limited experience with HDF it being referred to as a database. Heck I didn’t even realize it was queryable. I’m nitpicking here though. Point taken. There are lots of examples. I just have my own opinions of what a database should entail

By: Cellulose

Cellulose — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:18:14 +0000

The fundamental problem with all modern software is that it’s still run on transister computers…

I long for those days of vacuum tubes, slide rules and carbon paper…

By: Joseph Wallis

Joseph Wallis — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:09:09 +0000

When it comes to systems design and implementation……ESRI gets a D. If they hadn’t announced multiprocessor support in 9.3 I’d give them an F.

As someone else mentioned I seriously doubt they will re write their algorithms to offload to multiple cores. At best they will support basic threading that allows to offload OS tasks to a different thread or core.

The 64-bit answer is embarassing. Somewhere I think Jack is mumbling “No one will ever need more than 640K!”

Oh the advantage of having a private company….you dont have to answer to anyone!

By: Cellulose

Cellulose — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:15:10 +0000

I’d like to see some examples of “new formats” created in the last 5 years that are advertised as a database that include SQL.

If you take a look at developer soutions and B2B products, you’ll find non-SQL databases all over the place–and marketed as such.

Some examples:

My favorite so far is Xindice, an “XML Database” accessible only by XPath. Very useful, very novel, and very un-SQL.

RDF Triple Stores are frequently marketed as a “database”, but are accessible through non-SQL languages like SPARQL or Versa. The entire “semantic web” is based on this non-SQL “database”.

There are at least half a dozen implementations of RDF’s that don’t have SQL interfaces. I believe all of them market themselves as a database.

Again, I give you HDF (about 7 years old) and there’s not a lick of SQL there either.

These are just the ones I’ve worked with personally…

By: Cam W.

Cam W. — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:50:09 +0000

While I see why James’ analogy with Aperture isn’t perfect it still makes a point. If it was called ‘Aperture Photo Database’ would you’re expectations be different? Many applications use a ‘database’ to manage all sorts of things and don’t expose any SQL. My point is ESRI is promoting this file format as a database. I’m not aware of any new format (in the last 5 years or so) that was advertised as a database and was not accesable via SQL. Don’t get me wrong I really like what I’ve seen of FGDB, but I think it’s misleading to call it a database.

By: VBAHole22

VBAHole22 — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:29:07 +0000

When will ESRI publish a list of known software defects?

ESRI will publish a full list of software bugs in all of it’s software products in August 2007. Due to the size of the list it can only be viewed on 64-bit machines.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:09:07 +0000

Perhaps wives’s databases follow a different logic that ours

It would not be the first difference between m&w ….

I’ll try to convince mine to store cooking recipes in a File geodatabase ….

I’ll keep you informed