Author: James

The video from our Where 2.0 presentation is available. If you haven’t been following what the GNOCDC is doing down in New Orleans, this is a great introduction. You can download the presentation here.

Map Templates Resource Center

Something ESRI should have done when 8.x arrived.

The new resource center

As Steve pointed out, this is does deserve two exclamation points!!

Just like CSS for styling web pages, GSS is a specification for designing maps. Adapted for dynamic data sources, GSS can define changing geographic elements, display multiple datasets, and even respond to contextual tags like “condition:poor”.

Very tasty! Just look at this simple GSS and how you can render maps on the client.

body: {
fillStyle: "#fff",
lineWidth: 0,
},

node: {
fillStyle: "#ddd",
strokeStyle: "#090",
lineWidth: 0,
radius: 1
},

way: {
strokeStyle: function() {
return "rgba(1,1,1,0.7)"
//return color_from_string(this.user)
},
strokeStyle: "#ccc",
lineWidth: 3
},

leisure: {
fillStyle: "#2a2",
lineWidth: 3,
strokeStyle: "#181"
}

Previous conversation about styling GIS data.

I’m heading off to Where 2.0 in a couple of hours to present a talk with the GNOCDC on the work we’ve done with the web mapping technology.

“Junk Mail” and the GeoWeb Shine Light on New Orleans Recovery

If you’d like to have some beers, feel free to connect with me using the networking dashboard. I’m already planning on meeting a ton of folks who normally don’t roam in my “professional” GIS conference circuit. See you guys there!

One of the best new features of ArcGIS 9.3.1 is the Map Service Publishing toolbar in ArcMap. This tool helps you analyze your maps to see what is slowing the map down. No longer are you having to look for the needle in the haystack. You just activate the toolbar and hit analyze. Then ArcMap returns all the errors and warnings associated with your mxd.

The new Map Service Publishing toolbar in action.

If you double click on any of the “issues” it will take you to documentation explaining the problem and how to fix it.

ArcGIS Server documentation helps figure out how to fix problems.

One other feature about the toolbar which is a big help is the preview. You can preview any map on how it would be served in ArcGIS Server, from right inside ArcMap. You also get a timer to show how long it took to generate that request. This is of course helpful for the ArcGIS Server services, but can even be used to speed up ArcMap documents that are only going to be consumed on the desktop. If you’ve been working with a mxd that seems to be loading slowly, now you have the tools you need to debug why the map isn’t performing quickly enough.

The Preview ArcGIS Server window allows users to determine the speed at which their maps are rendering.

The toolbar also allows you to generate the Map Service Definition (.msd) files and even publish directly to ArcGIS Server from ArcMap (bypassing the need to go to ArcCatalog or the web manager).

The Map Service Publishing toolbar is really a great addition to the ESRI workflows, both Desktop and Server. Looking back at some of our existing map services we had authored with ArcGIS Server, I was amazed at how easy it was to discover the problems and then address them. Coupled with the new MSD files, ArcGIS Server is really a speed demon these days.

NOTE: PROJECT APPEARS DEAD

Remember TOPO! Pro for ArcGIS? Don’t bother using the Google if you don’t recall, because it is gone.

If you’ve invested tons of money in the state series then you’ll be happy to know that there is a tool that allows you to convert the TPQ files to JPEG with a world file. TPQ Converter allows you to use the USGS data on the State Series CDs by converting individual or all TPQs located in a directory to jpgs with a world file. Then you’ll be able to use the output with any GIS application you wish.

At my old company, we did have a most TOPO! states, but since I’ve moved to RSP, we’ve just used web services.

Doron does a great job outlining the problem and links to the fix so if you want to know more about the issue, check out his blog.

Since version 1.2 of the ArcGIS Javascript API, we’ve noticed a strange issue in both IE6 and IE7. When zooming in, memory consumption of the iexplore.exe process takes a huge jump and reaches up to 800-900 megabytes. When the operation ends, it goes back down to 50-60 megabytes. This has caused us a great deal of sorrow, as it sometimes caused our users’ systems to hang.

You can track the bug here if you wish.

Those JSAPI Bugs come right at you!

Regina Obe and Leo Hsu have a great new book coming out called PostGIS in Action. Looking at the table of contents reveals that this should be the book for learning how to use PostGIS in your GIS applications. I’m really intersted in Chapter 13, “First look at WKT raster”. Rasters seem to be pushing their way into my workflows so the more I can learn about it, the better I know I’ll be off.

OpenGeo has posted a new whitepaper on their ways OpenGeo is architecting their web mapping. The “OpenGeo Suite” is interesting to me in the ways they have thought about? integrating it into existing organizations. No sense rearchitecting everything, just keep what works and replace what isn’t. OpenGeo has a nice roadmap to follow. I talked a little last month or so about geostacks and I like the idea of plugging different things in depending on different needs of clients.

Just give me a roadmap and I’ll follow it.

Well got my copy late last week and others are reporting that they’ve received it as well. 9.3.1 isn’t revolutionary, more evolutionary in nature so there isn’t that, “I MUST HAVE IT” feeling with it. And you know what?? That is exactly what we need at this point, a nice solid release.

Some blog posts about 9.3.1:

• Installing ArcGIS 9.3.1 And ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 On Microsoft Windows 7
• Trouble Installing ArcGIS Server 9.3.1
• Overriding ArcGIS 9.3.1 File Handling
• “Problems” with Layer Package exporting

I’m sure we’ll see more information in the next week. Remember you can get the “What’s new in 9.3.1” from ESRI’s servers. We haven’t installed it yet, but hopefully there will be a chance later this week.

ArcGIS 9.3.1…. YEAH!