Category: Thoughts

This has to be a mistake. I can’t imagine the logic for forcing such a policy.

I like that ESRI has started to focus on getting ArcIMS developers ready for their eventual move to ArcGIS Server. There is a podcast up describing the “ArcGIS Server for ArcIMS Developers” session at the Developer Summit.

ESRI has no ArcIMS technical sessions planned for the 2008 Dev Summit so everyone should take that as a sign as the future of ArcIMS. Time to migrate folks.

MechaArcGIS consoling ArcIMS on its fate

I’m not sure why this “blog” post is getting much traction. I see no reference to where they got that information, I see no information about what this API is going to be (you can already skin AGX). All I see is ESRI Marketing sending a small email to Directions Magazine and they posting it without giving thought to what they are doing. I had thought the whole point of Directions Magazine was that they’ll have higher standards than us bloggers. But APB has really fallen off in the past 6 months to the point it only appears that they post press releases. I remember when APB used to break news on their own.

Where are the standards over there Joe?

Updated: See below, Joe assures us they are as dedicated as ever. Good enough for me.

ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 5 will be available by the end of March. This appears to be a “true” service pack release and not a feature release. I’m not sure I’ll bother installing it on our ArcGIS Server implementations, but we’ll deploy on all our ArcGIS Desktop seats. One change did catch my eye.

Launching maps and globes from web pages (new in SP5)

• Service Pack 5 includes a fix that enables you to launch maps (MXDs), globes (3DDs) and scenes (SXDs) by clicking on them in web pages. Previously you had to right-click the files and save them to a folder, and then launch them from the folder. With this fix, it is much easier to launch maps and globes containing internet content, such as those on the ArcGIS Online beta website: http://arcgisonline.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=access.desktop

This enhancement provides a useful way to make map services that you are serving with ArcIMS or ArcGIS Server easily accessible to other ArcGIS Desktop users, because you can simply include a map or globe referencing your service(s) on a web page.
Layer files can also be added to web pages for download, but ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 users have to right-click on a layer file on a web page and save it to a folder in order to access it. In the ArcGIS Desktop 9.3 release we are adding full support for adding layer files from web pages to your maps and globes simply by clicking on them.

OK, as promised, we are going to have yet another meetup this year at the ESRI Developer Summit. If you are going and want to hang out and talk shop, feel free to drop on by. You don’t need to be a blogger, developer or even at the Summit to attend. Just drop by and say hello and feel free to talk about anything you wish.

When: Monday 3/17 @ 6:30
Where: Wyndham Lobby Bar
Who: Anyone who wants to talk ESRI or GIS
What: Dinner/Drinks/Talking

I can think of two big things to talk about.

The ArcGIS Server RESTful API will come out at 9.3, but what about those who need it now? Well Dave Bouwman has blogged about its release. Because we all love demos, here is the link to the ArcGIS Server RESTful API.

http://65.101.234.201/rest/

Notice that it is running on OpenLayers. Think about what you are seeing there. You’ve got the ArcDeveloper.net RESTful API to adding features to the map. The source data is stored in ArcSDE in SQL Server, and is accessed via the ArcGIS Server SOAP API. As Dave Bouwman says, “lean and mean, but works quite nicely with OpenLayers and VE”. That is exactly what many of us have been asking for over the last year.

A reader forwarded me this article from Federal Computer Week about the Navy looking at only accepting “systems based on open technologies and standards”.

Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy chief of naval operations for communications, broke the news March 5 to a Navy IT Day audience in Vienna, Va., sponsored by AFCEA International. ‘The days of proprietary technology must come to an end,’ he said. ‘We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data.’

By using an open network architecture, the Navy could rapidly upgrade its capabilities and handle increases for demand, Edwards said. ‘Above all, we must break the stovepipes of data so that we can share information across domains,’ he said.

Now he is talking in general (no pun intended) here, but the point is clear. If you want to do business with the Navy, including GIS, you’ll need to support open standards. I’m guessing this means using WMS with your ArcIMS and ArcGIS Server implementations and not using Personal Geodatabases anymore. I’m pretty sure loading the data into SQL Server 2008 Spatial and then connecting to it from ArcMap is acceptable, but we are going to start having to change the way we implement GIS for our Navy clients.

Should be interesting to see how quickly this gets implemented.

Navy personnel excited about leaving “stovepipe GIS”

Looks like the OSGeo Jobs email list is needing some help.

As of today, still only one job is being offered – surely there are
more out there that people should be made aware of?!

I already posted about my thoughts on the email list so I won’t go over them again, but even I’m amazed that there is this little interest in the email list.

Tilting at Windmills – A jobs email list won’t grow the open source community as much as good case studies would.

Peter Batty poses an interesting question:

If you could do geospatial analysis 50 to 100 times faster than you can today, what compelling new things would this enable you to do? And yes, I mean 50 to 100 times faster, not 50 to 100 percent faster!

Just think about that for a minute, it blows one’s mind. I’m pretty sure someone reading this blog might have a good case study for Peter (below Peter says this isn’t hypothetical so if you’ve got a great need for such processing, email him your needs).

Wouldn’t it be better to be the Road Runner instead of being Wile E. Coyote when running spatial analysis?

Now this is exciting.

With our new WPF and Silverlight 2.0 map controls, developers and designers will soon be able to build rich interactive mapping applications for the desktop and web. In our opinion, WPF and Silverlight 2.0 take giant leap forward from other user interface technologies such as Windows Forms, Java, Flash, JavaScript APIs and ActiveX controls.

Many .NET developers I know are really excited about what WPF and Silverlight can do for them on the web. Now that development environments are available to actually push production websites out that support WPF and Silverlight, I think we’ll start seeing some very interesting Virtual Earth/GIS applications in the coming months. Despite what some say about “doing GIS” inside web clients, there is a movement toward giving basic GIS controls to web users to perform GIS tasks. WPF, I think, gives an effective platform to run geospatial analysis.

Personally I think I’ve got to get that MDNS project a kick in the pants. We’ve been stalled due to funding (warfighting takes precedence these days with DoD projects), but maybe we can get things back on track this spring.

WPF bringing in Weather.com tiles into your project