James Fee GIS Blog

I’ve asked the question on Twitter, but I’d like to get a more broad idea of what people think about developing applications inside a virtual environment. Results were pretty much on both extremes, either people love it, or people told me I need to get a new IT staff. We do have virtual servers running already, but the reality of actually developing inside a “virtual workstation” might be totally different. The upside of having different virtual environments available to me to use and not have any spillover into my “real” operating system seems greater than the downside of performance (especially on my laptop). But what do you guys think?

I sure as heck don’t want to end up like Arnold

All too often we have to request people resend datasets to each other because they get blocked by email, one important file gets left off or systems just don’t recognize a file type. I’ve run into a problem today where a company FTP site is rejecting a shapefile because it doesn’t recognize the .shp, .shx, .dbf extensions. I thought I could get around by zipping the data, but it appears to scan the zip file for extension types. So the “solution” was to zip the shapefile, change its extension to .doc and tell the recipient that they need to change the extension back to .zip.

This kind of stuff happens way too often. Personal Geodatabases have the problem of the .mdb extension that is rejected outright by most email systems and other formats aren’t readily usable by folks systems. The “old days” were easy because we all used coverages and shared them via the .e00 format that was almost always acceptable by everyone. Amazing how we take such steps back over time and you’d think data sharing would be easier than it was in 1995.

How do you folks share data? KML, GML, Etch A Sketch, e00, zip, web services, etc?

Update: Jason Birch has some ideas about using SQLite as an interchange format. Well worth the read.

Congratulations to Matt Giger for pushing out EarthBrowser 3.0. I have been following Matt’s triumphs and struggles on his blog as he’s worked at getting the latest EarthBrowser release out on his blog. I was more than happy to purchase a license and I encourage everyone else to do the same as well. I am very interested to see how folks use the Adobe Air based digital globe moving forward.

Click for larger view

A thread has developed on the OSGeo email list (out of an “open source career” post in fact) asking how one can perform the same tasks using open source software as they do with ESRI.

Paul Ramsey as usual writes a spot on response to the question:

My general synopsis: for server-side, for scriptability, for automation, for web-based, open source wins for most use cases, given a technically savvy user; for ad hoc, for cartographic production, for a user who is used to a point-n-click experience end to end, proprietary still wins.

Nacho Libre - defender of open source

I’ll be back hopefully next week.

I’m sure most ESRI customers received the following email from ESRI regarding the Oracle 10.2.0.4 patch and ArcSDE:

If you are a user of the ArcGIS Server 9.2 ST_GEOMETRY data type with Oracle, we would like to make you aware of the following issue:

The recently released Oracle patch version 10.2.0.4 may make unexpected changes to the ST_GEOMETRY schema. ESRI is in contact with Oracle, and we are working together to understand and quickly resolve the problem in this Oracle 10.2.0.4 patch upgrade.

ESRI strongly recommends that all Oracle-based customers not upgrade to the Oracle 10.2.0.4 patch until ESRI has certified this Oracle patch release with ArcGIS Server 9.2.

If you have already upgraded to Oracle 10.2.0.4 and think you may be experiencing this issue, contact ESRI Support.

What is humorous about the whole issue (well at least funny to those not caught up in it) is that Oracle includes the following statement on their readme for 10.2.0.4 patch.

“Patch sets are a mechanism for delivering fully tested and integrated product fixes. Patch sets provide bug fixes only; they do not include new functionality and they do not require certification on the target system.”

Guess that isn’t the case, eh Oracle?

It seems that every time we meet, I have nothing but bad news. I’m sorry about that, I surely am.

Brian Flood has apparently been busy.

Now that Google Earth 4.3 is officially out the door, I wanted to share another product that we’ve been working on. It started out as the framework for a standalone version of Arc2Earth but it quickly became apparent that the core functionality would be very beneficial to other Google Earth developers. So, we decided to create a custom tools harness that would load both .Net extensions (which the standalone version of Arc2Earth will be) and also runtime downloadable javascript.

Scripting in Google Earth? Now that is something that I really could take advantage of. Check out his videos on his blog post to see it all in action.

Non-Google Fanboy Look at Google Earth 4.3

Google Earth really is starting to remind me more and more of the AOL of the early 90’s. Loaded with tons of crap you have to wade through to find the good stuff.

While pretty, 4.3 is a performance dog. Of course all the other digital globes are dogs, but Google has taken a step back on ease of use and speed. I’m sure they’ll get it back at the next release, but for now it makes me want to downgrade to 4.2. Does Google Earth have Google Goo in its Google Gears?

Peter Batty announced on his blog that whereyougonnabe has entered beta. If you have a Facebook profile and want to give it a spin, you can do so right here. If the word whereyougonnabe makes no sense to you whatsoever, just head over to Peter’s blog and check out some of the videos on how to use it.

KML, the HTML of geographic content

OK, the MSR MapCruncher team has contacted me with some clarification as to the difference between the versions and what that means for the future:

You are correct that one reason there are two versions is licensing. The other reason is branding and support: the VE team has quality standards and wants to ensure they don’t find themselves doing support for a buggy product. We in MSR, on the other hand, are more interested in shipping bleeding-edge tools, even if it means things break. Right now, there’s not much in the MSR branch that’s not in the VE branch (other than a few undocumented hacks). But we’ve got some really exciting stuff in the pipe, and having that MSR branch available means we can turn out experimental versions very quickly. Then, if it gets a positive reception, VE can decide to push it through the product-quality process.

Well there you go.  Currently MSR MapCruncher is at version 3.2.4 and VE MapCruncher is at 3.2.0.  We’ll see how things change when MSR MapCruncher makes a bigger jump ahead.  But at least for now VE MapCruncher has a license that allows you to use it in a commercial setting so I suspect most would be better served with the more stable version.

Steve Lombardi and Chris Pendleton have both blogged about the new release of Microsoft Virtual Earth (and Live Maps). Steve sums it up:

This ended up being a much bigger release than originally planned including three full sprints of development. As always the changes visible in the user interface only scratch the surface of the dozens of improvements across the application tiers including Geocoding enhancements, browser compatibility (Safari and IE8), parsing improvements, reverse geocoding, printing improvements and tons more. We are also releasing an upgrade of our Map Control to version 6.1 for developers.

For developers there are some enhancements that will be very welcomed. Johannes Kebeck looks at more detail at some of the new API features. I’m very interested in Safari support and better printing. We had a project use Google Maps because of poor Safari browser support (which was a key requirement).

I still can’t understand why Microsoft continues to put Virtual Earth under the “Live” banner. Live Search is the worst search product out there and having that stigma attached to what might very well be the best web mapping application around only limits its potential.

Now if they could only get the players to animate, I could watch a baseball game in VE3D.

Niall Kennedy has written an excellent overview of Google App Engine from aimed at developers. Well worth the read.

Microsoft Virtual Earth - MapCruncher has its own webpage and a commercial license so commercial users can now use the product. You can download the MapCruncher beta here.

What is weird is that I’ve got both the MSR MapCruncher and the new Virtual Earth MapCruncher installed now and they both seem to be the same version (called MapCruncher Beta for Virtual Earth) but they have different version numbers: For the “new” Microsoft Virtual Earth -MapCruncher this is the about dialog:

The “older” MSR MapCruncher that I didn’t uninstall has the same interface with the same program title as the one above, but a different about dialog:

I’m sure Microsoft will get more into the difference and what this means for the MSR MapCruncher vs the new Virtual Earth MapCruncher but from the user perspective it is confusing. I get the commercial vs. research licensing, but is that it and why do you need two versions?

Dave Smith has been blogging about the issues with ST_Geometry on Oracle 10g.

Recently two ESRI customers have reported problems to ESRI Technical Support after upgrading to Oracle 10.2.0.4. The Oracle upgrade appears to be deleting some schema elements we require for the spatial type (ST_GEOMETRY). Uninstalling the upgrade to restore the prior version of Oracle does not work. ESRI is in contact with Oracle and we are working together to understand and quickly resolve the problem in this Oracle 10.2.0.4 patch upgrade.

It is a weird issue that came up and a problem on Oracle’s end. What is even more bizzare is that it really hasn’t gotten much play on ESRI’s Support Forums.

There is a thread in the support forums, but it really isn’t that clear to what the problem is and how to fix it (well we know there needs to be a patch, but that isn’t really spelled out on the forums).

I can only speculate that either that there aren’t many Oracle users rushing to upgrade to 10.2.0.4 or there aren’t many Oracle SDE users dealing with ST_Geometry. This is a really weird situation if you ask me if it trickles down from a regional office.

“This isn’t the support you are looking for”

I’ve blogged about Amazon Web Services and how one can leverage those services to develop scaleable applications, but now Google has gotten into the act. Google App Engine will let you to develop scaleable web applications using the same Google technology that powers their own web applications such as Google Maps and Gmail. Taking a quick look at the Google App Engine Docs really shows how this can be a great toolkit for GIS developers. A Python Runtime, Datastore API (Bigtable) and a URL Fetch API all line up very well with where GIS web applications are going.

I’m sure you’ve all seen news that 3Dconnexion released their new SpaceNavigator for Notebooks today and I’m not going to waste your time with another review of how “life changing” it is to find crap in Google Earth. I did receive a review unit from 3Dconnexion with the idea that I would look at how it works with ArcGIS Desktop and other professional applications that I use. I’ve already reviewed the “full size” SpaceNavigator and come to the conclusion that it does improve productivity with ArcGIS (enough so that we’ve bought units for our GIS Analyst staff) in both 2D and 3D. So what does SpaceNavigator for Notebooks bring to the table?

First, it is smaller. Many of you have seen the graphics that show how much smaller the unit is. Usually when things get smaller I have trouble using them. Small mice make my hands cramp up so I was somewhat worried that the new unit would fall into the same trap. Thankfully that wasn’t the case, the SpaceNavigator for Notebooks works well enough in my hand to be used every day with ArcGIS Desktop. The control seems even better. I’m not sure how to describe it other than the tilt function works better than the standard SpaceNavigator. I’m not sure if this is the case because the SpaceNavigator for Notebooks has a new mechanism inside or my existing SpaceNavigator has become worn with use. 3D control of ArcGlobe and ArcScene is as good as ever and of course you still have that great 2D control in ArcMap. As I’ve said before using the SpaceNavigator in your left hand and using the mouse with the right hand is much easier than trying to use the mousewheel to navigate ArcMap.

The SpaceNavigator for Notebooks comes with a leather case for travel, but I lost that at the Developer Summit last month so I’ve just been throwing it in my notebook bag. The case was nice, but isn’t really needed as there are no loose parts. The smaller size works well while on the airplane, fitting next to my smaller travel notebook on the seat tray, but if you’ve got a larger notebook you’ll still run into trouble. The USB cable is just about the right size, short enough to not be a hassle while traveling, but long enough to use when you are back in the office.

Now what I did have a problem with was the lighter weight. At first I found myself lifting the unit off the table and sliding it around. I’ve gotten much better at the lighter unit as I’ve used it over the last few weeks, but be warned that if you are rough with the existing SpaceNaviagator, you’ll have some teething problems with the new one. Other than that, it works just like its larger brother.

The full list of supported applications is here. One thing that needs to get addressed soon is “certified driver” for ESRI products. Now it isn’t that the driver for ArcGIS Desktop doesn’t work, because it works very well, but I just would rather have ESRI and 3Dconnexion work at getting an “officially supported” driver out soon.

Now is the SpaceNavigator for Notebooks worth the extra money ($129)? I’ve seen some reviews say the price twice the SpaceNavigator PE ($59). Now while that is true, the SpaceNavigator PE can only be used in “education or personal use” situations. The SpaceNavigator SE is $99 and has a “professional” license so that is the unit that needs to be compared to the SpaceNavigator for Notebooks as it also has a “professional” license. I think most professionals won’t balk at an extra $30 for portability and if you are a road warrior, weight savings can be critical. If space and weight have been a problem with your SpaceNavigator, you might want to take a look at the SpaceNavigator for Notebooks.

DISCLOSURE - 3Dconnexion provided me with a SpaceNavigator for Notebooks for evaluation.

Of course most everyone knows that OGR supports reading ArcSDE features, but writing wasn’t available. Well Hobu has the great news that he is looking for testers of OGR write for ArcSDE. This is great news for anyone who has ArcSDE and wants to use it with the many software applications/servers that user OGR.

Might be time to revisit this little project.

For those of you who didn’t get to see Build 600 in person at the Business Partner or Developer Summit this March, the ArcGIS Explorer team has posted a screenshot with the new “ribbon” interface. It does look really nice and the usability is much improved.

Dave Bouwman has written up a follow-up to his question at the Dev Summit closing session about ESRI overselling ArcGIS Server.

One issue I seem to run into a lot is the gap between client expectations of ArcGIS Server, and the reality. Although I did bring this up at the closing session of the Developer Summit, and we were told this would be addressed, I think it’s worth pointing out some specifics.

This is a HUGE issue to many of us in the consulting business as the realities of developing with ArcGIS Server sometimes doesn’t match up with expectations.

ESRI Salesman out the door to push ArcGIS Server capabilities to the masses.