Spatially Adjusted

Tag: user conference

  • Lunch with Brian and J

    I had a nice lunch with Brian Goldin and Jithen Singh after the .NET SIG. I owe J a couple beers tonight for picking up lunch for me (not even a dollar in my wallet). A vendor for a company called OQO came by with their handheld computer. I had seen it on the Internet, but I had never held on in my hands until today. The specs are a little light, but the compared to a Windows Mobile handheld running ArcPad, this thing really changes how you view a PDA. It runs Windows XP and has an 800×480 resolution screen. It is a compromise as it only has 20 gigs of HD space an 256 megs of ram, but these kinds of devices that push the envelope really get you excited. Now I just have to figure out how to get one as blogging would be really easy from it.

    See all you guys at Dick’s Last Resort tonight at 6pm!

  • ArcGIS Road Ahead — What’s Coming for GIS Developers at 9.2

    I decided to change up my schedule and head over to a “developer” technical workshop. I tried to first go to ArcGIS Server: Developing Applications with .NET but that was overflowing. I then peaked into ArcGIS Developer: ArcGIS for Java Developers, but I’m just so far removed from Java that I didn’t stay (sorry Steve). I ended up sitting at the “Road Ahead” for developers. Brian Goldin was talking about the new changes with 9.2 so I sat down.

    ESRI has really changed how they treat developers over the past view years. The big news for my GIS shop is the new Developer Kit for Visual Studio.NET and for our Java IDEs. The new ESRI Developer Network hasn’t really been pushed during this conference and I can’t understand why. I would have figured that during the plenary they would have shown the EDN, but other than just a one line blurb in the PowerPoint presentation. Brian did go over some of the enhancements planned for EDN including RSS feeds and better search, videos and code.

    VBA will continue to be supported (meh) but they are going to try and move it toward customization in ArcGIS Desktop rather than extending the Desktop. I was surprised how many people are still developing with VB6, but it does appear that people are moving to .NET and with integration to IDE that will probably happen sooner.

    The demo on the integrated toolset in Visual Studio.net was really nice with templates for ArcEngine, ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Desktop (with a wizard interface). This should really help with programmers workflows (there is the word again) simplifying the creation of a project. I’ve always hated setting up projects to extend ArcGIS Desktop because of having to add all those classes, but now it is pretty much automated. ArcGIS 9.2 will include the .NET 2.0 Framework so we won’t have to make sure that .NET framework is installed on clients. I’m sure they don’t want this announced, but there might be a release of ArcGIS 9.1 IDE integration on the EDN website this fall.

    The next demo was of the quick start templates for ArcEngine. The wizard allows you to choose the license and extensions that you want in your project with all the ESRI references added. What is nice is that the map control and toolbar is also created with this wizard and in fact you can run the application without writing one line of code. There is nice documentation of the quick-start templates so you can modify them to better fit your workflow.

    There are new GeoProcessor functions in 9.2 which is going to be welcomed. Developers can now add any GeoProcessor toolbox in their Engine applications. The ArcEngine runtime will run all toolboxes available to ArcView and with an extension to Engine you can have access to ArcEditor toolboxes. If you want ArcInfo GeoProcessor tools, you’ll need to use ArcGIS Server.

    Some of the new Engine controls include, symbology, add data, cross platform widgets (GTK and QT on Solaris/Linux and Windows). There are over 80 new commands and tools (such as identify, find) as well cartography enhancements. The toolbar control now supports XP themes as well as many new “MS Office like” toolbar features giving your applications a really nice professional look. The new TOC control gives you much of the same functionality of ArcMap (drag and drop) and the new symbology gives you control of symbology to your applications. The demo Engine applications that ESRI shows really looked nice and after the demo was done people applauded.

    There are tons of new Java enhancements in 9.2. The changes to the Java API have focused upon fixing many of the current issues. There is also IDE integration for Java IDEs (Eclipse is preferred) an there will be some really nice Visual Java Beans as well as some very nice JToolbar framework. ESRI has moved toward supporting common frameworks and away from custom frameworks. Java will support JRE 5.0 (and 6.0 if it is out) and support for Windows, Solaris and Linux. The SDK for Eclipse is wonderful and I’m going to have to get my Java programmer on it. Geoprocessing is also available with Java as it was with .NET. Keyur showed the Java IDE integration and the generators for toolbars. The automation is going to save programmers much time eliminating repetitive tasks, very nice. 9.2 is going to be a great release for Java programmers.

    Some new features for .NET Server Developer are ArcExplorer Web, Web site designer, AJAX support, Server object extensions and .NET 2.0 framework and some new ADFs. There will be another session that will go into more detail on .NET Server Developer. New Enterprise Java Beans will help Java programmers simplify calls to the server. There is a new API for Geoprocessing, Globe, etc and AJAX support. Again ESRI seems to be supporting Eclipse, but there will support for Sun Java Studio will also have some integrated support.

  • ArcGIS .NET Developer Special Interest Group Meeting

    I attended the first ever ArcGIS .NET Developer Special Interest Group Meeting (SIG) today and was happy to see so many ESRI developers who are really interested in GIS programming. I also got to meet fact to face many of the bloggers who will be at our blogger meetup later today at Dick’s Last Resort (6pm). Art Haddad lead the discussion and programmers such as Brian Flood and Jithen Singh talked about some of the development they are doing (J will be presenting his project tomorrow at 3pm). Art then opened up discussion with Brian Golden about what us developers would like to see with the new ESRI Developer Network (EDN). Many liked the idea of a “gotdotnet” where we can all share our code as well as a ESRI Developer Summit where deeper level discussion of developing using ESRI tools could happen. Many also said RSS feeds as well as email alerts to updates and changes in the EDN site.

    Rob Elkins let us know that EDN subscribers would be allowed in the 9.2 BETA program so we will be able to test our products against changes that are being made with ArcGIS 9.2. One concern brought up was developers who don’t have EDN because they already have all the software contained in it but don’t want to be left out of the EDN community. It sounds like that even though EDN is currently open to all, Rob and Brian will make sure that these developers will be included in any EDN or Developer SIG or Summits.

    I thought the turnout was great given that the SIG was during lunch and I think everyone there was enthusiastic about getting together again at a Dev Summit in the future. Even Microsoft stopped by and let us know if there was anyway they could help out.

  • GISUser.com on the 2005 ESRI UC Plenary

    Link – ESRI UC Report

    GISUser.com has their ESRI UC Report from the first day. It is a pretty detailed writeup of the proceedings, but they missed a huge announcement much like everyone else. I’m wondering what can be done to get ArcWeb more visible to users. Do people not understand what it can do or does the average ESRI user not care about web-based GIS?

  • ESRI UC Blog

    Don’t forget to continue to check out the ESRI UC Blog. They are continuing to post announcements through the week so if you are looking for something to do, make sure you stop by. I’m sure they would also appreciate comments so make sure you leave them in their comments.

  • 13,264 GIS Professionals at 2005 ESRI UC

    The ESRI UC Blog is reporting that as of this afternoon 13,264 people were registered for the user conference. Thinking back to my first one back in Palm Springs I don’t think I could have imagined this many people. With Google Maps, Google Earth and other consumer GIS tools one can only think the conference will be getting even bigger next year (not to mention we’ll all have those great new ArcGIS 9.2 products in our hands).

  • On MSN Instant Messenger at the Plenary Session

    I’m on MSN Instant Messenger so if you want to say hi, just add “cageyjames@hotmail.com” to your contact list.

  • Lunch with Brian and Steve

    I had lunch this afternoon (Sushi) with Brian Goldin and Steve Citron-Pousty. Took us a while to find a place that didn’t have a 30 minute wait, but eventually we did. I let both of them know how much I appreciated them blogging about ESRI and how hopefully more ESRI employees will take it up. I’m looking forward to the blogger meet up on Wednesday night and meeting more of ESRI’s bloggers as well as other GIS bloggers. Make sure you guys show up as we are all anxious to meet everyone face to face.

  • ESRI UC 2005 — Jack Dangermond

    Jack talked about the four core ESRI software strategies; Desktop, Mobile, Geodatabase and Server. ArcGIS 9.2 was mentioned for a early 2006 release. Clint Brown was then featured in a small video explaining that the 9.2 release would be consumer driven, more usable, higher quality with more documentation. I can’t argue with that! At 9.2 we’ll see some COGO construction tools as well as better attribute editing. It looks like we’ll get some of those old Workstation tools that we all used to love. Continued support for OGC (we’ll have to see to what extent that will happen). Jack thinks that tools such as Data Interopability will allow better sharing of data on the GeoWeb. Being able to translate datasets back and forth will be key.

    New advanced catrtographic toolsets will be announced. Storing cartographic representations in the Geodatabase will simplify displaying these datasets over and over again. ESRI seems to really be trying to get beyond having to export to products such as Adobe Illustrator. There will be some cartographic generalization features in 9.2 as well as “geographic sketching”. If you think about those typical “planning bubble maps” you’ll better understand how this will work.

    The ESRI Image Server application was VERY impressive. I’m really interested to hear more about how it works. We have ton and tons of digital imagery from our work around the world, I’d love to load that all into one location and not have to find the imagery on our server or archived off on tape. Going to just one source for aerials would be superb and I think Image Server can do that. I wonder if this will be released before 9.2 or will we have to wait until next year.

  • ESRI is Blogging the User Conference

    I just heard that ESRI is blogging the User Conference. Check them out.

    http://esriuc.blogspot.com/