ArcGIS 9.2 SP4 is Available
November 16, 2007 19 Comments
The ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 4 is available for download on ESRI’s support site.
ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 4
ArcIMS 9.2 Service Pack 4
ArcSDE 9.2 Service Pack 4
The Holy Grail
November 9, 2007 13 Comments
This is clear to me:
FeatureServer + ArcSDE Data Store = Holy Grail
Being able to store data in ArcSDE, but still access it freely across any and all platforms. ArcGIS clients can hit ArcSDE and everyone else can enjoy data served by FeatureServer. But deep down this is even bigger than FeatureServer because really what I’m talking about is GDAL/OGR ArcSDE Vector Write Support. That opens up loads of open source projects to ArcSDE users and gives them the best of all worlds. ArcGIS Desktop/Server users can continue using ArcSDE they way they always have and open source solutions can come right in the front door and coexist with existing workflows. The benefit will be realized by users who will be able to get products that work best for them.
If I have to sell Amway door to door, I will get this project funded.
The gatekeeper will no longer be able to stop users from writing to ArcSDE from OGR.
ArcGIS 9.2 SP4 out soon
November 5, 2007 46 Comments
We knew about this back in July, but ESRI has posted an announcement about Service Pack 4. Nothing about ArcGIS Server yet and that should be a big list because ESRI puts new features in their Service Packs. What is missing is the Vista support that was promised. I’m not sure why that isn’t listed (at least I don’t see it). Does that mean we won’t be seeing Vista support for ArcGIS until 9.3?
Open Source on the beach at Waikiki
October 1, 2007 25 Comments
I’m “stuck” in Waikiki this week at our Honolulu office helping them get back on track with their GIS after our GIS coordinator resigned to join her husband in the peace corps on Tonga. The new GIS person is really excited about GIS and that is always nice to be around. Sometimes even I need my GIS Kool-aid recharged.
Anyway I was hanging out at Duke’s Waikiki and randomly started talking to the group next to me at the bar. Turns out that they are all readers of my blog and have been migrating their GIS from an ESRI only shop to a combination ESRI/open source shop. It was interesting to hear how they were picking and choosing the best products from ESRI and open source to help them better get their work done. What was also interesting is that they didn’t decrease their maintenance costs, but reallocated. They’ve replaced most of their ArcView seats with QGIS, replaced all but one license of ArcSDE with PostGIS and in turn used those savings to buy more licenses of ArcInfo and extensions. They’ve been able to give their high end GIS analysts the tools they feel that they need to get their work done, but still increased their GIS production. Every person at their company has either an ArcInfo or QGIS license on their desk that they can connect to WMS services hosted by MapServer and PostGIS.
I wish I could have spent more time with them talking about this, but they were heading to China in the morning so they needed to get to bed. I liked how they were able to give better tools to everyone by prioritizing what they needed and picked the best tools for the job.
State of Colorado GIS Portal Launch
September 13, 2007 29 Comments
Great news yesterday out of the GIS in the Rockies Conference. I was planning on going to the conference this year, but just got so busy I could tear myself away from work. Remember what Jack says about being successful at GIS:
“Now is the time to be the last one out of the parking lot”
The Colorado Geographic Information Portal is now available for users to get access to publicly available GIS data. My company does quite a bit of work in Colorado these days and getting data was always a PITA as many different organizations had to be contacted to get datasets. So I was very excited to see what Colorado put up for their portal, especially since it launches after big changes in the Geospatial world. Alas, I was very disappointed in what I saw as it is just another GIS portal powered ESRI’s GIS Portal Toolkit. The biggest problem is that the ArcIMS front end is so dated and slow. If this was built on the WebADF or even better ArcGIS Server, there would be so much more functionality. In the end this is the same, cluncky interface that we’ve been used to for years on the Geospatial On Stop.
Vladimir Lenin rails against holding geographic data hostage to proprietary formats
The second disappointment is that the data is still really only available as standard shapefiles and saved jpg format. There is no real OGC support let along KML/KMZ support that would enable more users access to this data. I’m fine with no WMS/WFS services as that is an strain on resources for most public entities, but all this data should be available in shp, gml, kml/kmz, tiff, jpg, pdf, and ecw. I’d take shapefiles over anything, believe me, but the lack of KML support is very surprising.
OK, lets not get too negative here. Metadata is great for finding datasets and the Colorado Geographic Information Portal is loaded up with great metadata. If you are looking for data from Colorado, you’ll be able to find it easily with the search. Actually this is the one area the ESRI GIS Portal Toolkit gets right. It took me no time to track down data that I will be needing for a project near Colorado Springs using the metadata search.
So what do we have here? A great new resource for folks looking for data from the “Centennial State”. It is as clunky as any GIS portal out there so I guess this is expected, but there needs to be more focus on data formats beyond shapefiles and an improved mapping front end that should be viable inside Google Earth (and probably powered by ESRI’s WebADF). It is a good start, but most of these GIS portals start well and end up getting stagnant over the months/years. Maybe Jon Gottsegen’s new powers as GIO will enable him to be more nimble and able to make improvements to the portal to make it the first “Where 2.0″ data portal out there.
MapDotNet Server 2007 6.1.2 Released
September 6, 2007 1 Comment
I’ve had my head down working hard on some projects this week so I haven’t had an opportunity to really keep my eye out for important news, but Nate Irwin has caught my eye with news about MapDotNet Server 2007 6.1.2 being released by ISC. One new improvement that caught my eye:
Substantially improved rendering speeds with ArcSDE. This is especially the case in large multi-processor web garden deployments where the MDNS services are less likely to be processor-bound. Substantially improved SDE connection pooling resulted in upwards of 10 times the rendering performance in our tests. This was especially noticeable when ArcSDE is installed on a separate server from the MDNS web services.
Anything that makes talking to ArcSDE faster is good news in my book.
As I mentioned we’ve been working with MapDotNet Server 2007 and I plan to blog about the experience when I’ve got more time. It has been a nice learning experience for us (though under tremendous pressure due to a very tight timeline). We put ourselves in a bad position, but ISC really helped us out when we needed it. MapDotNet Server is very different from ArcGIS Server and ArcIMS so if you are used to the “ESRI way” of doing things you get frustrated. But once you understand how MapDotNet Server works and all the possibilities it opens up, it all starts to click and make complete sense. We’ll have to see how the prototype works for our client and then move forward with what they want to do. I’ll try and blog about the experience next week when my workload lightens up.
Going a different direction
August 15, 2007 30 Comments
We’ve implemented more ArcIMS sites than I can recall over the past few years. The chief developer on my team has probably as much AXL experience as anyone I know. But times change and clients have different expectations than they did in 1999 or even 2006.
“Because you didn’t come here to make the choice, you’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand *why* you made it.”
On one our latest projects, we are developing a site using SharePoint and what would have been ArcIMS. The difficulty we’ve had getting the WebADF to work the way we want has put a damper on our excitement that we had when it first showed up. It is just way too difficult for the “simple” and “quick” development that we have to do. Plus, as nice as the WebADF is, clients still are expecting a Google Maps type interface and the WebADF is not that (nor does it try to be). With the new licensing of Virtual Earth, we’ve decided that MapDotNet Server 2007 connecting to ArcSDE is the way to go. The front end will be based on Virtual Earth so folks will feel comfortable with the interface (it seems every ArcIMS web mapping site is different and that causes usability issues) and they’ll be able to work with the data rather than fighting the interface.
Now this isn’t to say that we are abandoning ESRI server products because that isn’t the case. We will continue to develop ArcIMS sites for clients who want them (I still say it makes sense to leverage existing licenses of ArcIMS or move over to ArcGIS Server Standard) than dump all that work and start new and ArcGIS Server applications for clients whose requirements need Geoprocessing. But for quick and simple web mapping I think MapDotNet and Virtual Earth will be the killer combination for ESRI .NET developers who are already familiar with the tools. The simple fact that folks won’t have to abandon any of their existing ESRI servers (ArcSDE is still there) and desktop clients, the ease of which we can develop applications and the speed of MapDotNet will give our clients that quick, easy to use, great looking web mapping tool that they have been clamoring for.
Maybe the ESRI REST API will change things for us (I wasn’t at the 2007 UC so I have no idea how it looks or works), but for now we are going in this direction. We’ll see what the 2008 Developer Summit brings for the REST API and rapid development of ESRI web mapping applications.
I find it interesting to see another ESRI developer look outside the ESRI stable for a replacement to MapObjects. There was some concern among many developers at the 2007 Dev Summit that ESRI was abandoning the smaller developers and focusing on enterprise level GIS tools. Steve, who posted on his blog about .NET SIG at the Developer Summit wrote:
Damian [Spangrud] talking … discussion about pricing … tension between large enterprise customers who expect it to cost more and smaller shops that think it is too much (like me).
That just scares me working with ESRI server software. I feel like I’m being priced out of the marketplace with their new tools. The days of writing simple and cheap Avenue or MapObjects application are over. Now you need superstars who know ArcObjects in and out and clients where price is no option. Maybe the RESI API will change this (or maybe not), but if you look around there are tons of tools available for you to use that won’t mess with your workflows and might just allow you to improve you output without spending tens of thousands of dollars.
So we’ll see where this all leads. We still may decide that MapDotNet isn’t for us and go back to trying to figure out the WebADF and its task framework.
CAD Client for ArcSDE 9.2 released
August 13, 2007 4 Comments
I’m probably only one of a few people who actually use the CAD Client, but I’m very happy to see that it was released today. AutoCad 2007 support is not there (2006 and earlier) so it isn’t the perfect solution, but at least now we can work with data inside our ArcSDE with our Autocad users.
Wonder why they kept the name ArcSDE. Shouldn’t it be CAD Client for ArcGIS Server Enterprise?
ArcGIS Diagrammer 9.2 Updated
July 31, 2007 4 Comments
Richie Carmichael has updated his ArcGIS Diagrammer 9.2 Beta to improve performance and better handle UNICODE characters in the XML.
ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 3 is out
July 31, 2007 11 Comments
Update – The service pack 3 has been pulled. Updates will be up later on Friday.
As promised by ESRI, the Service Packs are out.
ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 3
ArcIMS 9.2 Service Pack 3
ArcSDE 9.2 Service Pack 3
