ESRI FedUC “News”
Dave Smith has blogged about the first day “highlights” and I have to say I’m not impressed with the FedUC this year. Not much news coming out which is surprising since most people I know on the east coast are treating it at their UC this year (travel to San Diego is not happening for many people). The FedUC has always been more about application of technology than anything else so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the big news is ArcGIS Explorer Build 900 being showcased.
I suspect the real news will happen at the Business Partner Conference and Developer Summit where we’ll learn more about ArcGIS 9.4 and get some hands on with ArcGIS 9.3.1. Maybe we’ll hear more about the new Silverlight API which I was thinking would have been shown more than it was at the FedUC.
I guess for now we’ll just have to imagine what this means since no one is explaining it.
…ESRI is introducing the concept of “layer packages†which they believe will facilitate better data sharing. Layers referencing features can be packaged as an email or sent to the “cloud†as a searchable data file. “To me, this is a big deal,†said Dnagermond [sic]. Users will share the data and the knowledge acquired in creating their data. ESRI see users setting up a communities to share data but only those working on the project can have access to it. For those in secure environments this will be able to be used in their own back office environment.
the cloud eh?
The ArcGIS Explorer blog has a bit more detail on “Layer Packages”.
http://blogs.esri.com/Info/blogs/arcgisexplorerblog/archive/2009/02/18/arcgis-explorer-at-the-federal-user-conference.aspx
Hey James, fyi hulu videos are not streamed outside USA.
Yea but The Simpsons are available only on Hulu.
I can only work with what Fox gives me.
uh, i thought it was something technical like a video with the new Silverlight API, ehehe
Sharing geodata with email? Aughhhhh, after all this time I thought we were getting to the point where central repositories of data were being more commonly accepted.
Back to the silo world I see.
I believe the proper contraction for the Environmental Systems Research Institute Federal User Conference is more properly written as the ESRI FUC.
You can pronounce the acronym any way you’d like.
Ha! That’s pretty funny.
Shouldnt ESRI FUC be in the past tense.
Sounds like finally they are trying to develop a replacement for shapefiles, that can only be a good thing! Hey ESRI, while your at it, make it possible to mix geom types (points, lines, areas) in a layer, that would be great as well!
File GDBs are a replacement for shapefiles. Why would you really want to mix geometry types in a single layer, apart from laziness? Imagine how much fun it would be to use a dialog for symbolizing a layer that had every geometry type in it.
Boggled writes:
“Why would you really want to mix geometry types in a single layer, apart from laziness?”
Simple. Because it allows greater efficiency, both from a user work-flow perspective, but also from the perspective of the software internals. I dont call avoiding the need for the user or the internals to needlessly jump through proverbial hoops, laziness.
“Imagine how much fun it would be to use a dialog for symbolizing a layer that had every geometry type in it.”
Indeed. But users of modern GIS products do not need to imagine, they already know how much fun and more efficient it is. For example, Manifold System GIS, has long used this system and it works very well. See
http://www.manifold.net/doc/formatting_drawings.htm
It is only obsolete GIS products, such a those produced by ESRI, that need to make this needless distinction.
And users of “modern GIS” products are only about 15 years behind even the most basic CAD systems in this regard.
“And users of “modern GIS†products are only about 15 years behind even the most basic CAD systems in this regard.”
So what is different in the way CAD software treats the issue compared to “modern GIS”?
I suspect what you meant is that basic CAD software has not made this needless distinction for 15 years. However, Manifold System has only been in existence for about eight years and has always tried to use state-of-the-science concepts in its object model from the outset.
sounds like Shrek is lobbying to get a job at Manifold:
“hey, look at me, look at me…I’m such an ardent fan boy – I can say real mean things about ESRI. Please give me a job.”
I know the economy is bad, but this is pretty desperate.
Ho,Ho,
Very funny, i am flattered. But I dont have a background in computational mathematics so I doubt there would be vacancies.
But I take it you cannot offer a response to my comments on the above topic, other than to lampoon. So, come on, lets hear from you why it is that ESRI products must keep lines, areas and points confined to separate drawing layers?
But I take it you cannot offer a response to my comments on the above topic, other than to lampoon. So, come on, lets hear from you why it is that ESRI products must keep lines, areas and points confined to separate drawing layers?
Shrek,
I don’t think you want to get into this. I saw how that guy emilio b*tch slapped you on another forum. Are you a glutton for punishment? It is obvious that the only thing you know about ESRI is what you hear from Manifold fan boys. You are out of your league here.
Um, Shrek, because they aren’t drawing layers.
They are models of spatially oriented data representing a specific generalization. That’s GIS 101. What you see on the screen is just a cartographic representation of a spatial object entity, not a drawing. CAD does not treat the object entities as spatial generalizations. It treats them as parts of a drawing with no inherent spatial generalization information. If you take a line in CAD and move it into a different drawing, that line loses its meaning from the original drawing.
If you want to mix polygons with polylines with points in the same data layer (not drawing layer), you need to store the generalization involved with each row of the table, probably as part of the shape field. When you are dealing with a few million spatial objects, this can lead to some very very bad database bloat. You cannot normalize out this generalization because the generalization is attached to the object and you would need to keep this generalization with the object as it moves between data stores. Move the object entity into another database, or worse yet into a standalone layer with no ability to maintain table relationships, and you have lost the generalization information and now the object is useless as a modeled spatial object. Worse, you can no longer change the generalization of the object; you can no longer transform the line into its component vertices and edges nor the polygon into its component topology because you cannot derive the modeled object to produce the edges, vertices, and topologies. And -that- means you have lost the spatial relationship inherent to spatial analysis and transformation. Huge loss for a gain in drawing efficiency.
For ESRI, this is handled by dividing the generalizations into classes of generalizations; all objects in a feature class, shapefile, etc share the same generalizations.
Now, if you want to get into drawings. This is different. Drawings can be defined by rules, and you can draw points, polygons, lines, or all at once derived from the same geometry. ESRI had this feature; it’s called cartographic representations. I can pile an unlimited number of point, line, and polygon drawing representations onto a feature, and I can mix and match my drawing rules row. (and yes, this means that the ultimate way to model spatial data is as z-dimensioned polygon surfaces and display with cartographic rules, but point and polyline models are necessary to simplify the data models of more complex spatial entities).
(And yes, I do have a background in computational mathematics and data modeling.)
Long live coverages!!
Ho, Ho,
Emilio.aguinado or whoever he really is an idiot with a head full of shit.
Ho, Ho,
Emilio.aguinado or whoever he really is an idiot with a head full of shit.
Oh, well, when you put it that way you must know what you are talking about…
I’ve seen your expletive tirades on this forum and the other one. Obviously, you are easily rattled. That is an indication of someone who is out of their league. You would do well to follow emilio’s advice: go out, do a real GIS project, then come report back to us.
You function well around like-minded people. But, when you are placed in a spot where others can argue with you, you fall apart and start cursing. Best thing to do here is just go out gracefully, retire Shrek, come up with a new name, and then make logical posts.
Brett,
The issue is not what the drawing objects mean or their geometry and topology, it is why they cannot be shown in a single drawing layer.
This is what my reply to Boggled was about after he questioned in reply to Patrick Weber, why anyone would want to show them together in a single drawing layer. Your lengthy reply does not explain why ESRI products cannot.
I agree with you about the principles you describe, but you are confusing these principles with how they are applied in practice. The way ESRI has chosen to apply these principles is different from the way Manifold applies them. Hence Manifold can show, points, areas and lines within a single drawing layer, but ESRI products seemingly cannot.
Please follow the thread before you jump on your hobby horse.
I found myself thinking the same thing!
@Brett: Thanks for a nice explanation!
@Shrek: Not trying to be any dumber than I already am, but how is Manifold fundamentally different from ESRI in this respect? My very limited experience of Manifold is that it has analogous mechanisms for describing (a) data layers and (b) arbitrary view(s) of that data, and you create your map by choosing your data layers and defining how you want that data to appear in this map, which is much the same approach as in ESRI, isn’t it? The details of the tools and terminology may be different, but the principle looks the same, at least to this dumb newbie.
ChrisW.
You are right Manifold applies the same universal principles of geometry and topology as ESRI products, but this is not the issue. The issue was why do ESRI products not allow points, lines and areas to be present in the same layer (or drawing layer in Manifold-speak, Manifold does not use “data layers”). I am as mystified as you. So far the replies given have not provided any explaination this issue.
Shrek: Thanks for your reply.
I heard that Manifold is STILL storing vector and raster data in two different formats. How 2008 of them…..
I just wanted to let everyone know how extremely frustrated I am using ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.
I try to do the simplest things and it can’t write/refresh the data fast enough. I also support other users and esri has decided to force ‘roll up’ to 9.3 from 9.2 (.mxd) I know the individuals on this site are advanced users and know all this, but its a Monday and a poor working stiff like me doesn’t need this added #$%^! Besides, I need a new place to vent the people in my office think I’m crazy with all screaming I do at my monitor.
Lastly, I can’t tell you how many times ArcGIS has made me look like a complete idiot to my superiors. They want a simple .PDF map with road labels that make sense. Well, I export and I export and I export and I still cant get those G@d damn labels to appear where I want. I know, I know ‘jerryrigg’ the annotation!
Huh, Whew I feel slightly better, now back to ArcGIS desktop (one average GIS specialists living hell)!
Esri just showed off some very nice silverlight api demos hitting gp services and doing some dynamic rendering as well all integrated into sharepoint. probably the highlight of PUG.
JB,
It’s very easy to blame the software, but it seems the problem is in the chair in front of the keyboard. Have you ever tried taking a class to be more knowledge instead of screaming at your monitor? Have you done any of the tutorials like using Maplex extension (if you have that) or even just read it? The tutorials are in the documentation folder in case you are wondering and if you install the tutorial data, it’s there too.
So you can choose to keep looking like an idiot to your bosses or learn how to use the software better (and this goes for any software for that matter). I’m not trying to be smart, but want to point you have options to learn and better yourself instead of taking the easy way out. And that makes all of us GIS users look bad.
My $0.02
W.
@Brett (his comments on why its not a good idea to mix geom types):
I do not claim to completely understand or be able to disprove your comments about , so I will choose not to comment on them.
But can you then explain to me why Microsoft thinks its okay to mix spatial data types inside one table? I had to look for a bit to find any information on this, but it seems according to this guy that it’s no problem whatsoever to mix in one table points, polygons and even surfaces?
http://jasonfollas.com/blog/archive/2008/03/27/sql-server-2008-spatial-data-part-2.aspx
At the end of the day, what happens behind the scenes of the GIS or Spatial DBMS to optimise storage, retrieval and processing, I dont care as long as its fast, reliable and complete. And this Manifold seems to have been able to do for years (and now Microsoft does so the same). So please explain that to me!
So much anger. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to the Dark Side. I can’t believe how emotional people seem to be about ESRI or Manifold. They’re just tools people.
I don’t hate ESRI or Manifold. As a vendor of a competitive product line (MapDotNet – http://www.mapdotnet.com), I like to see customers give us a fair shake of course.
We’ve been looking at one of the latest ArcGIS 9.3 based web mapping sites (for the City of Honolulu) located here: http://gis.hicentral.com/Pubwebsite/. It has a lot of features, but the user experience is not up to par if you ask me. I’ve seen one person put out a very nice ArcGIS based interactive mapping site (Dave Bouwman), but everything else I’ve seen is pretty poor if I evaluate it based on overall user experience.
It is obviously not a ‘one size fits all’ market, and I am glad we’ve selected to fill the UX niche. I think there are a lot of ESRI and Manifold users who can benefit from what we have to offer.
An old carpenter friend of mine in Canada (very old…at the time he was 84 and still working. This was before ‘socialized’ medicine and retirement packages) once said “you’re only as good as your tools”
This assumes, of course, you know which end of the saw to hold when you’re cutting on something…or whether you should should just whack the mother$%&#er with a hammer and be done with it.
Hi Wilson,
I’m just wondering have you ever been punched in the face? I mean right in the nose. My guess is you haven’t.
How many tutorials does an ESRI user have to read that will teach him/her how to circumvent ‘upgrades’ in the software? I mean, c’mon you take a shot at me and provide zero solutions besides read the help. Is 6 service packs acceptable? I’ve never seen that before but hey what do I know, I’m just a dumb lemming. The ArcGIS software packages are getting larger and larger the workstations CPU’s can’t process it fast enough unless its on SDE, my organization can’t justify that purchase. I have to deal with what I have and all you can do is give me the old ‘keybord-monitor’ bit.
Thanks for your $0.02
JB
[...] He even envisioned the emergence of a GeoFlickr where the community shared and remixed ESRI layer packages. While both talks had their unique quirks and perspectives on the GeoWeb/neogeography each [...]