2010 ESRI Developer Summit

Unfortunately this year I didn't get to go to the ESRI DevSummit but I have been

keeping a close eye on the plenary videos and tweets from everyone that were there.

Following is a list major going ons at the dev summit.

ArcGIS Desktop 10

- New icons....yeah!!??

- Total new modern UI + dockable windows (very visual studio like)

- Python = AML, Python editor with intellisense built right into ArcMap. Python is fully integrated map production, analysis, scripts, reports, etc . (not sure how non-developers are going to like this, they already think ArcMap is too complicated.)

- ArcCatalog built right into ArcMap

- Search engine built into ArcMap

- Seamless panning

- Background geoprocessing....FINALLY!!!!

- New sketch tool with template based design

- New Add-Ins framework...no need for admin privilege to install an add-in. Available in for .NET & Java.

- Share Add-Ins using ArcGIS Online and install right from the web browser.

- Fast map display

- Full integration with ArcGIS Online

- Drag toolbox tools onto toolbars

- Will support .NET 4.0 and VS2010

- They want us developers to throw a way old arcobjects code and replace it with Python....yeah that should go over real well.

The new development platform for 10 is suppose to be streamlined, so they rather you use that. (I get the feeling arcobjects as we know it is on its way out. ;-) )

- Ships in June!

ArcGIS Engine 10

- Engine inherits all new features of Desktop.

- Simpler API

- License options, concurrent and borrowing

ArcGIS.com

- I wonder how long before ArcGIS.com snuffs out GISCloud.com, WeoGeo.com, Fortiusone.com, Cloudmade.com and anyone else with a cloud offering.

ArcGIS Server 10

- Web editing on all client platforms JSAPI, Silverlight, Flex, iPhone SDK

- New Feature service

- Ability to make a custom REST services based on ArcGIS Server REST API

- Time data is supported

- Mosaic feature to publish imagery tiles without any preprocessing...very FAST!

ArcGIS Mobile

- sdk support for iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone 7, Android

- Mobile manager to publish maps for mobile apps

ArcGIS Online + Explorer

- Explorer has been ported to silverlight and now can be accessed in all major browsers.

Misc

- Working on a full 64bit version of ArcGIS Server

- File Geodatabase API...get more here

- Scott Morehouse, Director of Software Development says there pivoting all apps to web/cloud concept.

The major point you get from this years dev-summit is that ESRI is taking

gis web applications and platforms very seriously. How long will it be before you see ArcMap and all there desktop apps running in the ArcGIS Cloud? Probably once they sort out a good license model and scale ArcGIS Server. The question is will they take it that far? If they do I can see a lot of partners that spent good money building web apps investing in ESRI server technology being very ticked. Plus that would push a lot of the new up and comers of the gis cloud party out.

I guess time will tell if ESRI will dominate the cloud like they dominate the desktop and server space.... I'm betting yes.

TweetGIS

I just wanted to talk about a little project I did early in the year for ESRI's 2009 Developer Summit's Dev Challenge contest. At the time people were just starting to understand what Twitter was and how to use it. So I thought it would be a really neat way to use Twitter as an editing status feed on parcel data. It would tweet when someone edited the attributes of a parcel and include a link to the parcel that was edited. It would also tweet when a new user was created and when one returned.

Since ESRI's Javascript framework doesn't support attribute editing I separated the data from the features. I put the attribute data inside Google Spreadsheets, which I found out does not have a record limit.

The project is made up of 2 apps. The front end which consist of html, jQuery and ESRI's JSAPI Framework. Then the server side piece which I used ASP.NET MVC, TweetSharp library and Google's Spreedsheet API.

The project came together really well and took 2 weeks of late nights.

Here is a presentation I did on it

Tweet Gis

View more presentations from DonnyV.

Demo

http://tweetgis.civilsolutions.biz

Source Code

http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/javascript/arcgis/index.cfm?fa=codeGalleryDetails&scriptID=16058

2009 ESRI Developer Summit

ArcGIS 9.3.1 Server (ships after U.C.)
- New Optimized Map Service that is as fast as ArcIMS or sometimes faster.

- New Map publish toolbar in ArcMap that helps optimize mxds and rendering speeds, using the analyze tool. The analyze tool produces errors, warnings and messages to help you see what's slowing down your map service. It also creates a new optimized mxd file with a .msd extension, that is used for the new Optimized Map Service. During one of the sessions it took a map that rendered in 12sec and optimized it to .8 secs.

- New Silverlight API beta is released with some custom controls like automatic point clustering and rendering. The demos were really slick and fast. At one of the sessions someone asked what the limitations of the Silverlight API was. Art Haddad said he tested rendering 10,000 points with no problem. He says your bandwidth is now your bottleneck. For you JavaScript API folks out there, you know the pain and limitation of only showing 100 points before it brings your browser to a crawl. Also map rotation will be supported. I believe this will be ESRI's default web client.


ArcGIS 9.4 Desktop (ships late fall or early next year)
- New UI with dock able controls like Visual Studio

- Catalog has been added right into ArcMap

- Asynchronous geoprocessing (basically when running a toolbox tool it will not lock up your whole ArcMap session anymore)

- Side by side deployment (9.3.1 & 9.4 versions will be able to run on the same machine)

- High performance graphics

- Full python integration with script console

- Enhanced editing in 2D & 3D

- No support for IE6, VB6, VS2005, Oracle 9i, SQL2000, Win2000 & Win Server 2000

- VBA only available for legacy

- Python is now the default custom tool language

- New layers tab in ArcMap that groups the layers by there state. Groupings like Visible, Out of Scale Range, Hidden layers, and Selectable layers.

- New editing tools for ArcEngine that match the tools in ArcMap

- Search integration in all products

- New layer type called "Query layers" that limits displayed features using SQL syntax.


ArcGIS 9.4 Server (ships late fall or early next year)
- Web editing service provided in all web APIs.

- Support for native SQL, no ArcSDE required.

- Faster map tile retrieval.

- Query Layer support

- Access to standalone tables

- Improve map cache update workflow

- Full support for domains

- Support for native SQL



ArcGIS Explorer 900
- New feature lets you create presentations with fly over animations using your data. It also lets you import you PowerPoint slides.

- Virtual Earth data will be available.

- New ribbon interface and a custom settings file can be created to limit what tools are shown for custom user installs.



Other random items
ArcGIS Online (ships after 9.3.1) - Using your global account you can log in and share your data by uploading it. You can even create groups and secure them so that only certain people have access to the data. You can even create hosted maps from your uploaded data. No mention was said if this would be a free site or some type of paid service.

Layer Packages - These are basically compressed files that will include the layer symbology and data in one file. This will be used to upload data to the new ArcGIS Online.

Using Open Layers with the REST API - James Fee gave an interesting user session about modifying the open source project Open Layers to use the ArcGIS Server REST API. Right now it supports a subset of the REST API features but will support all functions possibly by Fall of '09.

ArcGIS Mobile 9.4 - Mobile will be supported on tablets and the SDK has been made easier for task based programs. The same program should work on handheld and tablet with no modification.


This year I would say the key jargon phrases for the summit are "Web Maps" and "Story". "Story" is taken from Microsoft and basically its a way to assign emotion to a product. It also describes the user experience. It was used in almost every session I went too. "Web Maps" is ESRIs way of saying "stop creating sites that mimic ArcMap on the web" and create more focused web map applications with the least amount of layers. I'm not really sure this is cost effective. Since most clients want to get the most bang for there buck and don't really want to pay you to create 5 focused sites when 1 light web gis viewer could do the same thing. I understand there shooting for the Google simple map app, but I don't believe in these financially
sensitive times that this makes sense.

Overall I think the Dev Summit was good and I'm really looking forward to playing with the Silverlight API and the Optimized Services.

ArcGIS 9.3 License Manager...Where are my licenses!

Don't know if anyone has had this problem. I just updated our license manager to 9.3 and now it doesn't want to dish out licenses. This drove me a little batty for a while because I would run through these trouble shooting steps and it would work and than later in the day it would stop working again. Well I finally noticed that when I would log out of the machine, the ARCGIS.EXE would stop running. That's when it hit me, the windows service isn't running. So I took a peek at windows services and what do I find? No ArcGIS License Manager Service! For some reason the install didn't create it. Well luckly I have this sweet little tool that I've been using since my VB6 days that can create a windows service from any .exe. Once I ran the tool and created the service everything was at one with the universe.

Update 08-29-08:
Use this exe "C:\Program Files\ESRI\License\arcgis9x\lmgrd.exe" to create the service and name the service "ArcGIS License Manager".

2008 ESRI Developer Summit

Some news for all you GIS nerds out there...

ArcIMS
- ArcIMS is dead; there will be no new features or enhancements for it. They are really pushing ArcGIS Server and did not mention ArcIMS once. Support is there but I don't think for to long.

ArcReader
- It looks like ArcReader will be going by the way side and ArcGIS Explorer will take its place. I spoke with one of the developers from the ArcGIS Explorer team and they say they are moving in that direction. They are the same people that work on the ArcReader team so new development will go towards ArcGIS Explorer.

ArcGIS Explorer 9.3
- Explorer will be able to open shapefiles and FileGeodatabases locally but not Personal Geodatabase.

- The interface has changed and it looks like the ribbon in Office 2007.

ArcGIS Server 9.3
- The new REST API is very impressive and I think will be the default way of interacting with ArcGIS Server. They say in 9.4 you will be able to edit data through the REST API also for geometry and attribute data.

- You can use the new REST API to run geoprocessing tasks and return their output to a custom viewer, Google Earth, Google Maps or Virtual Earth. You can even send queries to minimize your return output all using a url sent to ArcGIS Server.

- ArcGIS Server has the ability to serve out data in multiple formats one of them being kml/ kmz format. No need to convert data into kmz anymore.

- New JavaScript API will make things a lot easier on the web front end. There touting it as the new Avenue for ArcGIS Server. The JavaScript API is based on the REST API. Plus the JavaScript and REST API are license free unlike the Web ADF.

- Web ADF has been rearchitected to use Microsoft's AJAX Framework and is also a hybrid system. Some things will happen on the client side and some on the server side, performance has also been increased.

- 9.2 Web ADF applications will need to be converted for 9.3 Web ADF. They do offer a tool to make that conversion. (Of course during the session it bombed and errored out. So let's hope they fix that before release.)

- The architecture needed to support the WebADF hasn't changed though. Still uses com ports to connect to ArcGIS Server. Plus I didn't hear of any license changes either.

ArcSDE
- Full support for the open source & free database server PostgreSQL has been added.

- You will be able to query and edit geometry data using TSQL on all database platforms. This will be limited to simple features only. Topology, networks or any advanced features will not be supported.

- They will be retiring the sdebinary format and standardizing on the st_geometry format. There shipping a ArcTool box tool that will make it easy to convert to the new format.

- There will be no further development on SDE command line functions but it will not go away. It will be supported like Workstation.

ArcMap 9.3 & beyond
- Looks like a lot of bugs and performance problems will be fixed in 9.3. They used Coverity specifically for this task and found bugs that have been in there since 8.3…..cross your fingers folks ;-)

- VB6 will not be supported in 9.4. VB6 applications will need to be converted to .NET.