Spatially Adjusted

Category: Thoughts

  • Free Oracle Database 10g

    Link – Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Downloads Beta

    I don’t think this is going to be much of a threat to MySQL or PostgreSQL users. What Oracle should have done is offer the depreciated 8i Enterprise Edition instead of dumbing down 10g. Basically this is a ploy to get companies hooked on Oracle and then require companies to upgrade to 10g Enterprise Edition when their applications require it. Don’t get too excited about installing ArcSDE with it as the limitations of Express Edition should make it practically unusable. Standard Edition 10g is still a better choice and at about $149 per user, not that expensive.

    I still think ESRI should be looking at a version of ArcSDE that works with PostgreSQL but maybe that time is soon.

  • David Maguire on how ArcGIS Explorer works

    Link – ArcGIS Explorer – how it works

    Upon start up the client automatically makes a web services connection to a set of ESRI ArcWeb Services globe services. The web services are powered by ArcGIS Server 9.2. A new set of explorer services has been added to the Server core so that anyone (with ArcGIS Server) will be able to create and publish a service. It will also be possible to view ArcIMS and OGC WMS services. As you navigate around the globe, page views are streamed across the web to the desktop application for rendering. All the tasks (mini-applications) are server resident and are called from the client.

    David posts a new screen-shot of ArcGIS Explorer (finally one with satellite imagery). How much quality will be put into these images is just a guess for most of us but since the screen shot is zoomed out so far, I guess it isn’t as good as Google Earth. I suspect it will be better than Public ArcWeb Services, but less than what one could buy via ArcWeb. Where that will put ESRI in relationship to Google Earth is anyone’s question. I’d suspect though that the greater choice of layers that will be available in ArcGIS Explorer coupled with the fact that you can easily connect to so many different geospatial servers could make ArcGIS Explorer a good competitor for Google Earth.

    What is clear though is that ESRI is looking at ArcGIS Explorer to drive sales of their server products and in the end this will probably result in ArcGIS Explorer complementing Google Earth, rather than replacing it. It all hinges upon if users can create WMS and other geospatial server links as quickly as Google Earth users jumped on KML. We’ll just have to wait for the beta and see how it goes.

  • ESRI ArcGIS Explorer Website Up

    Link – ArcGIS Explorer – thanks to all who sent this in

    Well here we have a nice close look at ArcGIS Explorer including this screen shot of the interface.

    Ae

    It has a very nice Windows XP look to it vs the non standard look of ArcGIS (yea i said it) and Google Earth. The screen shot is somewhat disappointing as it doesn’t show up satellite imagery but take a look at the “table of contents” on the left hand side and tell me you aren’t really interested in more information.

    Update – as I sent this out, Darren Cope linked to the same page also. He’s put some of his own spin on the ArcGIS Explorer story and why he thinks it might have a chance at being quite successful.

  • Google Maps + ArcSDE + ArcIMS + ArcWeb =

    Link – Google Maps + ESRI’s ArcWeb Services

    • Users can geocode by city (Lawrence), address (1930 Constant Avenue, Lawrence), zipcode (66047), or the intersection of streets (9th & Iowa, Lawrence). We are using the Public Services category of ESRI’s ArcWeb Services.
    • The black and white imagery is coming from ESRI’s ArcSDE through ArcIMS. We are using the ArcIMS cache on demand system that I mentioned here. The reason for this is the lack of quality imagery data that Google provides for most of Kansas.
    • The Map client is the Google Maps ajax client.
    • The Road data is from Google Maps (Teleatlas).

    Quite a novel way to get around limitations of all the products. You’d think with so many sources and different servers this would be slow, but it looks quite snappy and is a big improvement over the standard Google Maps version. Great job guys!

  • David Maguire on ArcGIS Explorer

    Link – ArcGIS Explorer – geographic exploration system

    With ArcGIS Explorer you can fuse data from multiple servers (OGC WMS, ArcGIS Server, and ArcIMS) and overlay local vector and raster data sets. The task-based interface allows fast visualization of massive 2D and 3D server-resident global terrain, raster and vector databases. The user interface exposes additional tasks for navigation, routing, geocoding/reverse geocoding.

    David lets us know a little more about ArcGIS Explorer including that the beta will be out in a couple weeks. The biggest question I have so far is what ArcWeb services will be free? There is so much available for cost, but the free Public ArcWeb services choices are small. I can only hope that they will have good imagery by default, but at least support for most GIS server applications should allows others to fill the gap. I guess we’ll also see one of Sean Gillies’ favorite Web 1.0 applications integrated into ArcGIS Explorer, The Geography Network. Are there any plans to improve that service? What printing options do users have? Can we here more about the personalization and customization of ArcGIS Explorer (and I assume ArcGlobe server on the back-end)? What are the basic system requirements for ArcGIS Explorer (Google Earth runs wonderfully on my laptop, but ArcGlobe is a dog)? Does ESRI plan to have a community developed around ArcGIS Explorer (a huge issue as GE has a wonderful community and the current forums at ESRI are difficult to use)?

    I’d love to see some screen shots or a video though of ArcGIS Explorer in action.

  • 2006 ESRI Developer Summit Announced

    Link – 2006 ESRI Developer Summit

    Join us for the first ESRI Developer Summit held on March 17 – 18, 2006 at the Palm Springs Convention Center in Palm Springs, California is a two day event for GIS, Mapping, and Spatial Developers.

    Event features include

    • Keynote presentations on developer opportunities in GIS
    • In-depth technical presentations by ESRI staff
    • Community Center
    • Tech Talks
    • Birds-of-a-Feather Forums

    Thanks to Art, Rob and Brian for getting this going. I’ll be there.

    Devsummitlogo06

  • Tracking Tropical Storm BETA

    Tropical Storm BETA Public Advisory

    Another week and another storm in the Caribbean is going to cause havoc for residents. These storms with Greek names are just freaky, though I can assume if you are hit by one its name isn’t very important considering more pressing needs such as food, water, shelter. Anyway, you can track the storm using either ESRI’s storm tracker application or the Hurricane Tracker.

    Ts beta

  • Planet Geospatial Update

    I’ve added many more feeds into Planet Geospatial tonight for a total of over 60 blogs. You’ll see some old posts at the top of the page for a couple hours. It seems that some blogs feeds (in this case Atom feeds as usual) have bogus dates in them. The Python script I’m running detects this and assigns the current time to them. This should go away after more blog posts happen over the next couple hours.

    Remember you can subscribe to any of the blogs by clicking on the RSS feed link on the right of Planet Geospatial or you can subscribe to the Planet Geospatial feed which includes all of them.

  • ESRI’s ArcGIS Explorer Revealed

    Both Ed Parsons and Jeff Thurston give us a quick look at the new ESRI ArcGIS Explorer at the 20th ESRI European User Conference. I’m not one to use the word “Google Earth Killer” until I’ve played with it, but both Ed says:

    ArcGIS Explorer will be a free 15Mb download from the ESRI website and will connect to a dedicated ArcWeb server farm at ESRI providing an experience similar to Google Earth, although I was not clear where the imagery is sourced from. What got me excited however, is the ability of ArcGIS Explorer to use other data services including OGC WMS and WFS servers and any ArcIMS server you may already use. ArcGIS can also display local data, File GDB’s,shape files, most image formats and even KML files from your PC’s hard drive.

    Rather than the small controlled demo at the 2005 UC, this demo was of the actual product and it appears that it has impressed many GIS professionals. Jeff says:

    You are going to love this. This is a 2nd generation GIS product that is Google Maps, Google Earth, Virtual Earth and World Wind and more. ESRI has taken a major leap “a revolutionary leap” into the viewer exploration world.

    It is one thing to say that ArcGIS Explorer is a Google Earth competitor, but it would seem that ArcGIS Explorer will change the way people use GIS. I can’t wait to see it.

  • Revised ArcMap Crash Dialog

    Flickr user supercooper has created his own ArcMap crash dialog.

    51772342 ce7d9382b2

    Actually this Flickr user has some nice looking maps uploaded. Not a bad way to show your portfolio.