Moving into the cloud
Over the past year I’ve found myself working more and more with cloud based SaaS products. We presented at Where 2.0 how we were using SaaS cloud services to help deliver data to the community in New Orleans. I then presented a keynote at the Safe FME UC about removing barriers to data sharing and how you can use cloud content management services to help share data within your organization or with the world. Clearly my mind was on pay as you go geospatial content management.
WeoGeo Logo
Well lucky enough for me a great opportunity presented itself and Thursday was my last day at RSP Architects. I’m really going to miss working with some very innovative people and the friendships I made there will definitely last me a lifetime. Starting next week I will be working at WeoGeo helping integrate their Library content management system in with existing workflows. Starting all this off will be the ESRI User Conference and we’ll have a booth (booth 217) where we’ll be demonstrating how the WeoGeo Library can help people manage their spatial content with ESRI ArcGIS. If you are at the ESRI UC next week, please stop by and say hello to myself, Paul or Dan.
I still plan to keep this blog exactly the way it is, blogging about GIS and whatever geospatial catches my eye. Planet Geospatial will continue to stay the way it is (and hopefully I’ll have a little time to improve it). I’ll be blogging the ESRI UC Plenary as usual so if you aren’t there, check back on Monday for all the latest news.
I’m really excited to be joining WeoGeo and the excellent team that has built the cloud based services and the great RESTful APIs that I’ve been able to use on projects. You can reach me at my new email address jfee@weogeo.com.
Here comes the anti-database “movement”
I’ve been seeing more and more articles like this one from Computerworld about abandoning SQL databases.
The meet-up in San Francisco last month had a whiff of revolution about it, like a latter-day techie version of the American Patriots planning the Boston Tea Party. The inaugural get-together of the burgeoning NoSQL community crammed 150 attendees into a meeting room at CBS Interactive. Like the Patriots, who rebelled against Britain’s heavy taxes, NoSQLers came to share how they had overthrown the tyranny of slow, expensive relational databases in favor of more efficient and cheaper ways of managing data.
NoSQLers? Oh boy are we going to be in for it when they hear how critical databases are for the geospatial industry. To me this “revolution” sounds more like a backlash against the traditional SQL DBA who doesn’t want to change in the face of “Web 2.0”. Of course it is very easy to move to a new data storage platform when you either have a ton of money or no product yet. While I do think technology such as Google’s BigTable and Amazon’s SimpleDB as an inevitable course for many web applications, wholesale abandonment of SQL and databases such as Oracle/SQL Server/PostgreSQL is absurd.
No-SQL “Patriots” dump RDBMS without a care to the implications…
No-SQL Patriots dump RDBMS without a care to the implications…
Here comes the anti-database “movement”
I’ve been seeing more and more articles like this one from Computerworld about abandoning SQL databases.
The meet-up in San Francisco last month had a whiff of revolution about it, like a latter-day techie version of the American Patriots planning the Boston Tea Party. The inaugural get-together of the burgeoning NoSQL community crammed 150 attendees into a meeting room at CBS Interactive. Like the Patriots, who rebelled against Britain’s heavy taxes, NoSQLers came to share how they had overthrown the tyranny of slow, expensive relational databases in favor of more efficient and cheaper ways of managing data.
NoSQLers? Oh boy are we going to be in for it when they hear how critical databases are for the geospatial industry. To me this “revolution” sounds more like a backlash against the traditional SQL DBA who doesn’t want to change in the face of “Web 2.0”. Of course it is very easy to move to a new data storage platform when you either have a ton of money or no product yet. While I do think technology such as Google’s BigTable and Amazon’s SimpleDB as an inevitable course for many web applications, wholesale abandonment of SQL and databases such as Oracle/SQL Server/PostgreSQL is absurd.
No-SQL “Patriots” dump RDBMS without a care to the implications…
No-SQL Patriots dump RDBMS without a care to the implications…
Implications of ESRI MapIt
So ESRI has a new product arriving:
Another major/joint effort involves the development of a new ESRI product called MapIt. This technology provides simple geocoding and mapping capability for the Microsoft environment. MapIt enables developers to create maps of their enterprise data stored SQL Server 2008 and Excel. MapIt is designed to give non-GIS organizations the ability to easily create maps and share them within a variety of Microsoft environments like SharePoint. Details will be announced in July.
There were rumors of such a product coming out at the DevSummit, but nothing came of it. This appears to be the continuation of the Silverlight/WPF product that ESRI has been working on. What is interesting here is it would appear not to be using ESRI Servers (ArcGIS Server/ArcSDE) and direct connecting to SQL Server then visualizing on Bing Maps. It would appear that you can develop using ESRI’s APIs, but not deal with ArcObjects. As an ESRI developer though, I’m wondering if this could be my new MapObjects?
No word on pricing and licensing, but I’m going to be paying close attention to MapIt in two weeks.
Implications of ESRI MapIt
So ESRI has a new product arriving:
Another major/joint effort involves the development of a new ESRI product called MapIt. This technology provides simple geocoding and mapping capability for the Microsoft environment. MapIt enables developers to create maps of their enterprise data stored SQL Server 2008 and Excel. MapIt is designed to give non-GIS organizations the ability to easily create maps and share them within a variety of Microsoft environments like SharePoint. Details will be announced in July.
There were rumors of such a product coming out at the DevSummit, but nothing came of it. This appears to be the continuation of the Silverlight/WPF product that ESRI has been working on. What is interesting here is it would appear not to be using ESRI Servers (ArcGIS Server/ArcSDE) and direct connecting to SQL Server then visualizing on Bing Maps. It would appear that you can develop using ESRI’s APIs, but not deal with ArcObjects. As an ESRI developer though, I’m wondering if this could be my new MapObjects?
No word on pricing and licensing, but I’m going to be paying close attention to MapIt in two weeks.
ESRI UC Response to Questions
Every year ESRI sends out a questionnaire to attendees of the UC and they’ve just posted the results from this year. Some of the questions are C-level and probably not interesting to this crowd, but it does get into some of the 9.4 (as was seen at the DevSummit), map automation, file geodatabase, and new technology. A couple that caught my eye:
Q: When will ESRI support direct access to the spatial types within relational databases (i.e. SQL 2008, Oracle Spatial, etc) that are not geodatabases (i.e. does not utilize ArcSDE technology)?
At 9.4, ArcGIS introduces new functionality called ‘query layers’ to allow users to directly access spatial type data stored in a database that is not a geodatabase. Query layers allow users to use a SQL query to access spatial type data and create a new (read-only) layer in ArcMap. This layer will allow users to map, query, and analyze data from spatially enabled databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, DB2, or Informix without registering the spatial information in a geodatabase or installing and configuring ArcSDE.
Additionally, geodatabase users who store their spatial information in spatial types can use this functionality to work with their data using complex SQL queries.
Q: Will ESRI support the iPhone?
Yes, we will support the iPhone as a mobile platform to get maps from ArcGIS Server and do queries and edits on data from ArcGIS Server. We plan on releasing an application for the iPhone later this year and then adding additional capability as part of our 9.4 release. In addition developers can build their own solutions for the iPhone using the REST APIs available from ArcGIS Server.
Q: Is ESRI moving into any new business lines?
Our fundamental business is building ArcGIS and supporting our users and partners with effective technical support and professional services to help them implement their technology. In the last year we have extended ArcGIS with online services. Fundamentally, this is ESRI’s implementation of GIS in the cloud. This environment involves a large deployment of ArcGIS Server and an extensive library of GIS content. This direction is principally focused on providing Web services to our software users. Generally speaking our users have been very pleased with these services. ESRI now receives several million requests a day for the use of these services worldwide, and we believe it’s just beginning.
Q: How will ESRI support professional standing through certification?
Professional certification provides proof that an individual has attained competence at a defined level of performance. With the ArcGIS 9.4 release, ESRI intends to offer a technical certification program designed around the use of our products in successful ArcGIS implementations. This program will be available to ESRI users, partners, distributors, and staff. While it will focus on the use of our products, it will be complementary to the GISP certification offered through the GIS Certification Institute, which focuses on the practice of GIS. We hope this will help create an active and qualified user community that can expand the reach of GIS in solving problems around the world.