James Fee GIS Blog

Alex Barnett of Bungee Labs took a look at 8 Trends in Software as a Service Platform which highlights some of the movement toward web services moving forward. This ties in nicely with what I was saying last week and what Paul Bissett also hit on. The ProgrammableWeb blog also looked at all the mashups [...]

I spent most of the afternoon talking with folks about web mapping systems and how to choose a direction to go. What is painfully obvious when you start laying out the different frameworks, APIs and servers is that there is just no clear answer as to what system to pick. When it comes down to [...]

Abe Gillespie has the great news on his blog, zigGIS 2.0 is officially announced. Obtuse Software is proud to announce the upcoming release of zigGIS 2.0. For over two years zigGIS has enabled ArcView to view and analyze PostGIS layers. New to version 2.0 is the ability to edit PostGIS data as well as support [...]

On Friday the Google Summer of Code Blog posted very interesting news about touchEarth created by Pawel Solyga. touchEarth, an application he developed that allows you to control Google Earth using two finger gestures on multi-touch table. touchEarth uses the Google Earth COM API to control some of Google Earth’s features, while all the multi-touch [...]

TileCache 2.0 has been released with support for ArcIMS AXL requests. This should be of great interest to users of ArcIMS who want to create a tile cache. If you have a server that can run Python CGI and has write access to the hard drive and an ArcIMS Web Service, you can create tiles. [...]

The ArcGIS Explorer Blog just announced that AGX build 440 is available: The ArcGIS Explorer Team is pleased to announce that today, at approximately 1:58 p.m. PST, the newest version of ArcGIS Explorer – Explorer 440 – was released. If the ESRI servers are your home servers, you’ll be notified that there is a new [...]

PostgreSQL is about to get really integrated into ArcGIS workflows in 2008. First off we have ArcGIS Server Enterprise (ArcSDE) which will support PostgreSQL (ESRI and PostGIS data types) and now we have zigGIS 2.0 which will support PostGIS/PostgreSQL without the need for the traditional “ArcSDE” connection. First and foremost, the zigGIS codebase will remain [...]

OK, so here is what is happening at 9.3 with ArcSDE. ArcSDE finally rides into the sunset. Even though technically ArcSDE has been replaced at 9.2, it was still a separate product. Now at 9.3 it will become fully integrated into ArcGIS Server. ArcGIS Server Enterprise will be the “traditional” ArcSDE level where ArcGIS Server [...]

Announced earlier this month and talked about for at least a year (I think they mentioned this at the 2007 Dev Summit), ESRI is moving away from socket licensing to using the number of cores on the server. Through November 30, 2007, ESRI licensed server software based primarily on the number of physical sockets on [...]

Good news for those who want to take advantage of SQL Server 2008 Spatial and ArcGIS. ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.3 software, the next scheduled release of ESRI’s ArcGIS suite, will take full advantage of the new spatial technology in the upcoming release of SQL Server 2008. With the November SQL Server 2008 community technology preview (CTP), [...]

Rob Elkins says that there will be some complimentary pre-conference seminars at the 2008 ESRI Developer Summit next year. I have to say this is probably a good idea as many of the folks I talked to at the Dev Summit last year were well over their heads as many of the sessions are quite [...]

Directions Magazine has a press release from ESRI about a new hire from outside the company. From the PR: Says Jack Dangermond, ESRI president, “We are pleased that Dirk [Gorter] has joined our company and believe that he has much to offer with his extensive experience in product management in the commercial enterprise software industry. [...]

Brian Flood has a detailed post describing some of the new features of the latest Arc2Earth beta where it can embed Virtual Earth’s 3D globe in ArcMap. Now Arc2Earth has benefits beyond just creating web mapping from ArcGIS, but creating layouts that include 3D views (check out this screen shot to see what this means). [...]

I just got this tidbit of information from a friend who talked to Ed Katibah (lead Program Manager for SQL Spatial). Spatial datatype, methods and indexes will be supported equally on all SQL Server editions (Express, Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise) at no extra charge. That means anyone who wants to use the SQL Server 2008 [...]

I get a ton of emails asking me exactly how ESRI’s geodatabase replication works. It is pretty slick to be honest so I think everyone who has SDE should probably learn more about it. ESRI has posted a podcast titled “Geodatabase Replication: Working with Replication that explains in more detail what geodatabase replication is. Geodatabase [...]

The ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 4 is available for download on ESRI’s support site. ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 4 ArcIMS 9.2 Service Pack 4 ArcSDE 9.2 Service Pack 4

This is clear to me: FeatureServer + ArcSDE Data Store = Holy Grail Being able to store data in ArcSDE, but still access it freely across any and all platforms. ArcGIS clients can hit ArcSDE and everyone else can enjoy data served by FeatureServer. But deep down this is even bigger than FeatureServer because really [...]

We knew about this back in July, but ESRI has posted an announcement about Service Pack 4. Nothing about ArcGIS Server yet and that should be a big list because ESRI puts new features in their Service Packs. What is missing is the Vista support that was promised. I’m not sure why that isn’t listed [...]

There has been some discussion on my blog about the ArcGIS Online Data Appliance. Most ESRI users already know what is on the thing because they have had access to the ArcGIS Online Beta. The ArcGIS Appliance provides terabytes of pre-rendered U.S. nationwide and worldwide data that you can host on your own secure server. [...]

As someone noted in my comments, ArcGIS for AutoCAD now supports version 2008. Now I can get back to using ArcGIS for AutoCAD with our projects. My workflow is still hampered by the CAD Client for ArcSDE being only available on AutoCAD 2006 and earlier, but the planners will be happy as they can use [...]