ESRI Blogs

ArcGIS Online moving to Google / Bing tiling scheme: What does this mean for you?

sterlingdq — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:42:00 GMT

Earlier this year ESRI announced that ArcGIS Online services will be migrating to the Mercator-based tiling scheme used by Google Maps and Bing Maps. The ArcGIS Online engineers have been busy caching tiles for months in anticipation of this switch, which is anticipated to occur by the end of this year. This post is about how the change may affect you. At the end of the post we also provide steps on how to make the change for your services.

Why a tiling scheme change?

Since the release of ArcGIS Online three years ago, the 2D services have used the WGS 1984 geographic coordinate system and a 512 x 512 pixel tile size. Google and Bing, in contrast, use a modified Mercator projection and a 256 x 256 tile size. The scale sets used by both tiling schemes are similar, but not equivalent.

Why didn’t ArcGIS Online originally choose to match Google and Bing? Interestingly enough, the first ArcGIS Online services were designed in 3D for viewing in ArcGlobe and ArcGIS Explorer. Without getting into the technical details, it’s enough to say that the coordinate system and scales used in the 2D ArcGIS Online tiling scheme have their roots in the ESRI globe technology for which ArcGIS Online was originally built.

With the broad uptake of the ArcGIS Web APIs, the 2D ArcGIS Online services have become very widely used. Some organizations struggle with choosing either the ArcGIS Online tiling scheme to match their ESRI software stack, or the Google / Bing tiling scheme to match a better-known standard. With a unified tiling scheme for the three services, the decision gets a lot easier.

A few organizations are required to support mashups with both ArcGIS Online and Google Maps or Bing Maps. After the ArcGIS Online tiling scheme change, these organizations will no longer have to maintain two caches.

What does this mean for you?

If you are getting ready to create a very large cache to overlay ArcGIS Online, it may be best to create the cache in the Google / Bing tiling scheme, anticipating the change.

If you are not able to re-create your cache at this time, the old services will remain available for a minimum of six months. They will be offered “as is” and will not receive any further data or cartography updates.

Advantages of switching to the Google / Bing tiling scheme

The biggest advantage of switching to the Google / Bing tiling scheme is standardization. This tiling scheme is well-known and widely used. Whether you love the Mercator projection or hate it, it is now customary in Web maps designed for mass consumption. In the end, simplicity of math (you can fit the world on a square at the smallest scale) determined the way most Internet users expect to see the world.

There are some subtle performance advantages to the Google / Bing tiling scheme. Because the tiles are only 256 x 256 pixels, less tile area falls outside the periphery of the map. This means you have to send less data across the wire. The smaller tiles also enhance the perception of the map loading faster, compared with waiting for the 512 x 512 “chunks” of map to appear.

Challenges associated with the Google / Bing tiling scheme

If you re-create your caches in the Google / Bing tiling scheme, you need to anticipate a few issues. First, because the tiles are 256 x 256, you’ll be creating roughly four times as many tiles as you had previously in your ArcGIS Online cache. The larger number of files in your cache will increase cache copying time. The smaller tile size also means you have to send more files to the client during a map request.

Your cache size on disk will probably also increase. Some of the 256 x 256 tiles can get very small in size if they contain few features; much smaller than the 4K default minimum cluster size on Windows. Some organizations have saved space by storing their caches on disks or partitions formatted with a smaller minimum cluster size, such as 1K. This reduces the discrepancy between “Size” and “Size on disk”.

Finally, the Mercator projection is going to stretch your map vertically, especially if you work with extreme latitudes. Besides affecting the appearance of the map, this distortion may cause you to create many more tiles than you might otherwise expect. At these latitudes, it is critical to target your cache at just the scales and geographies that you need. You may want to enable on-demand caching for the most isolated regions. The distortion introduced by the Mercator projection also means that before you measure a feature such as a user-drawn polygon, you should project the feature into a more locally-tailored coordinate system such as UTM or State Plane.

How do you create a cache to match the Mercator-based ArcGIS Online services?

Here’s the workflow for caching a map to match the Mercator-based ArcGIS Online services:

Open your source map document in ArcMap and set your data frame coordinate system to WGS 1984 Web Mercator. You don’t have to re-project the source data, although this can make caching go faster. Some people even create a one-way replica of their geodatabase in the WGS 1984 Web Mercator coordinate system and use that replica just for caching.
Publish a map service.
Open the Service Properties and click the Caching tab. Choose to draw the map service Using tiles from a cache you will define below.
Click Load tiling scheme from and select Google Maps / Microsoft Virtual Earth. Once the scales load, do not add or remove scales or change the tile size.
Create tiles for just a small area of your map, using a feature class to constrain the caching extent if necessary.
Test your new cache. There are already a few new ArcGIS Online services that use the Google / Bing tiling scheme, such as the World Topographic Map. Build a simple test application with these maps to evaluate how your cache overlays with ArcGIS Online in the Mercator projection. If your data doesn’t align, see the alternate steps below for creating a cache in WGS 1984 Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere).
Once everything looks okay, open the caching tools again and create all the tiles for your cache.

Exceptions and Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere)

There are a few scenarios where you will have to follow some alternate steps to get your caches to overlay correctly with the Mercator-based ArcGIS Online services. The conditions are:

You’re overlaying a cache with ArcGIS Online in the Web ADF OR
Your data did not align correctly when building a test cache with the above steps. This is most often because your source data uses a datum other than WGS 1984 or NAD 83

In the above two scenarios, you need to publish your cache using the WGS 1984 Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere) coordinate system which is the exact coordinate system used by ArcGIS Online. The Web ADF requires an exact coordinate system match for cache overlays. Also, this coordinate system makes it easier to perform some datum transformations.

Open your source map document in ArcMap and set your data frame coordinate system to WGS 1984 Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere). While you are doing this, apply any datum transformations to WGS 1984 that you require.
Follow the steps in ESRI Knowledge Base Article 37329 to create a cache for the service.

Migrating map tiling schemes in the ArcGIS Online Help has more details about the switch and the WGS 1984 Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere) coordinate system used above.

Contributed by Sterling Quinn of the ArcGIS Server development team.

Is the Recession Over? Musings on the Current State of the Economy from a Two-Handed Economist

cmpalermo — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:58:00 GMT

By Doug Skuta

“Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say on the one hand…on the other.” Harry S Truman

Dare I say it…on the one hand, it would appear the U.S. economy is showing some signs of strength. Real gross domestic product (GDP) clocked in at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter this year. Businesses are starting to burn through inventories which may ignite further production to keep pace with current and future sales. Plus, it is easy to think the economy may have finally bottomed out with recent evidence of stabilization and even improvement in housing indicators. In fact, many media outlets have cited such positive developments as confirmation that the “Great Recession” is finally behind us.

On the other hand (and you knew that was coming), much of the growth in third quarter GDP was from the transient effects of automotive and home buyer subsidies. The government’s Cash for Clunkers program expired, and the newly extended $8,000 first-time home buyer credit winds down by the end of April 2010. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released the latest monthly performance on the labor market. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose again, to 10.2 percent—leaping into double digit territory for the first time since the early eighties. As long as people are losing jobs and saving their money to weather the downturn, don’t expect consumer spending to rebound. Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of GDP. The upcoming holiday season may serve as bellwether on spending in 2010.

Fiscal and monetary policies are still operating in overdrive. The Federal government is spending money at historic levels in the hope of spurring growth. The Federal Reserve continues to keep short term interest rate at or near zero to inject more liquidity into financial markets. However, such moves are also raising fears of unsustainable debt levels and future inflation, as evident in the slumping dollar and the soaring price of gold.

In the end, the National Bureau of Economic Research’s recession dating committee makes the official call on the recession‘s end. While the stock market has recovered some of its deep losses, I think we are still in for a bumpy ride. The fear is the Great Recession may morph into the “Great Reflation” once the economy starts to absorb the massive cash infusion. The economy may continue to grow through next year, but at a much slower rate. And unemployment will persist until businesses see evidence of higher demand for their products and services.

ESRI Data & Maps 2009 Update is now available!

ccharpentier@esri.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:25:00 GMT

by James Shimota

The ESRI Data & Maps 2009 Update is now available! It has been a few months in the making and there are many new features you will really enjoy.

•In previous years, the Data & Maps Update included only those datasets that had been updated since the last ArcGIS software release, requiring you to have to overwrite the previous Data & Maps footprint with the new files. To make things easier, the 2009 update DVD contains all the data present on the Data & Maps and StreetMap North America DVD (released as part of the ESRI Data & Maps 9.3.1 Media Kit) plus all the updated datasets and display files.

•Another major enhancement is that most of the new layers in the update are available for download through the ESRI Data & Maps Group on ArcGIS Online Sharing. Now, if you only need a couple of the data updates, you can just download those instead of having to request the entire DVD.

•In StreetMap, the streets network, geocoding files and locators have been updated to the 2005 Tele Atlas street base. All other supporting datasets in the Data & Maps StreetMap have been updated to current 2009 Tele Atlas data.

•The new (and much anticipated by many users) 111th US Congressional Districts data is included in this update, along with the existing 110th Congressional District. Displayed side by side provides interesting study.

•Both US and Europe demographic data has been updated for 2009. Tele Atlas US Census data for Block points through the State level are all new. MBR Research provided the source for the European NUTS updated datasets, which are the European equivalent to the US Census data.

•For better graphical representation, many new .lyr’s and multi-scale grouped layers have been incorporated into the product. The Europe Purchasing Power shown above is an example of a multi-scale grouped layer. By zooming in, more detailed demographic data is displayed within four scale ranges.

You can request the DVD here or visit the ESRI Data & Maps Group on ArcGIS Online to download the specific layers you need. Enjoy!

Lidar Solutions in ArcGIS: New Web-based Lidar Courses

bbicking1 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:35:00 GMT

This post was written by Clayton Crawford, Product Engineer on the 3D Analyst team in ESRI's Software Products group in Redlands

Due to the demand for lidar training, ESRI’s Training Center now offers three web-based courses on lidar. First is a free training seminar that provides an overview of lidar capabilities in ArcGIS and introduces high level concepts. The other two include hands-on exercises and are geared toward data managers and analysts. For more information see each course’s description...

Getting Started with Lidar in ArcGIS

Managing Lidar Data in ArcGIS

Using Lidar Data in ArcGIS

ESRI at the Random Hacks of Kindness Codejam

jbaranyi — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:07:00 GMT

The Random Hacks of Kindness event sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, The World Bank, NASA and SecondMuse took place in Mountain View CA Nov 12-14 as a codejam focused on new solutions for disaster relief. ESRI sent a team to participate and work on tools for the open source community.

Onsite the ESRI team built a working widget for the Sample Flex Viewer. This widget, called Geo Status, will be available soon from the Flex API Code Gallery. Since the Sample Flex Viewer is a framework for integrating maps, data and services and is very extensible the team was able to quickly complete the task. Many agencies, such as the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, have benefited from and contributed to this community of widget builders.

The Geo Status widget allows the user to link the tool to their HelloTxt (http://hellotxt.com) account which may be linked to up to 59 different social networking sites. Geo Status lets you click on the map to insert X,Y location coordinates to send with your message. There is also an "I am OK" function that allows for a quick message to be sent out (with location information) with a simple message that lets friends and family quickly know that you are OK. The widget can easily be configured to work with any hellotxt account.

ESRI supports low-cost and no-cost solutions with a number of free mapping APIs, as well as a user community that shares code freely to extend these viewers. For more information on our free web API's, please visit the ArcGIS Server API's Community page at http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/index.cfm?fa=community.

The Geo Status widget developed at the Random Hacks of Kindness event will be made available for free download soon from the Flex API Code Gallery at http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/flex/index.cfm?fa=codeGallery.

The next Random Hacks of Kindness event is in the planning stages for the end of February on the east coast. Hope to see you there!

Contributed by the ESRI Random Hacks of Kindness Team - Andy Gup, Moxie Zhang and Tim Craig (pictured above)

Got Live Feeds? The USGS Releases the Natural Hazard Support System based on ArcGIS Server

jbaranyi — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:04:00 GMT

The USGS Rocky Mountain Geographic Science Center (RMGSC), based in Denver, CO, recently released their Natural Hazard Support System (NHSS) application based on ArcGIS Server and the ArcGIS API for JavaScript. This application (http://nhss.cr.usgs.gov/) contains a wealth of dynamic data including Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Wildfires (from GeoMAC), NOAA Weather Warnings and Watches and much more.

The Data Resources page discusses the sources of each of the data sets as well as the legend. Also at the bottom of the page you'll see info on the publicly available ArcGIS Server services:

Three map services were created for use in the NHSS, and each of these services is also publicly available for use by other Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Map Service Name: nhss_haz

Map Service Content: U.S. Volcanoes, Other Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Wildfires, Wildfire Perimeters

Map Service Projection: GCS_WGS_1984

Map Service URL's: http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/nhss_haz/MapServer

Map Service Name: nhss_weat

Map Service Content: Weather Watches and Warnings

Map Service Projection: GCS_WGS_1984

Map Service URL's: http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/nhss_weat/MapServer

Map Service Name: nhss_info

Map Service Content: Stream Gages, RAWS, Tide Stations

Map Service Projection: GCS_WGS_1984

Map Service URL's: http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/nhss_info/MapServer

These services can easily be added to the Emergency Management Common Operational Picture Template or Sample Flex Viewer by just adding a few lines to the config.xml file. Simply copy the following XML in to the livemaps section of the config.xml file above the other layers:

<mapservice
     label="USGS NHSS Other Information"  
     type="dynamic"
     visible="false"    
     alpha="0.75">
     http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/nhss_info/MapServer</mapservice>

<mapservice
     label="USGS NHSS Weather" 
     type="dynamic" 
     visible="true" 
     alpha="0.75">
     http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/nhss_weat/MapServer</mapservice>

<mapservice 
     label="USGS NHSS Natural Hazards" 
     type="dynamic" 
     visible="true" 
     alpha="0.75">
     http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/nhss_haz/MapServer</mapservice>

Furthermore you can leverage the data from and use it within the Live Layers Widgets in the Flex Viewer. This will allow you to bring more attention to the data layer(s) and bring up some of the record details.

Create an xml configuration file for the Live Layer perhaps by making a copy of the LiveLayerWidget.xml in the com\esri\solutions\flexviewer\widgets directory of the web application and call it LiveLayerWidgetWildfires.xml.

Edit the file to include the information needed such as REST End Point to the map layer, the fields to include as well as any hyperlink information. To do this for the Wildfires layer use the following:

<configuration>
      <layer>http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/nhss_haz/MapServer/4</layer>
      <query>OBJECTID > 0</query>
      <fields>FIRE_NAME, REPORT_DATE, ACRES, HOTLINK, STATE</fields>
      <titlefield>FIRE_NAME</titlefield>
      <linkfield>HOTLINK</linkfield>
      <refreshrate></refreshrate>
      <zoomscale>250000</zoomscale>
</configuration>

Finally add an entry to the config.xml file within the widgets section for this Live Layer Widget:

<widget label="Wildfires" 
icon="com/esri/solutions/flexviewer/assets/images/icons/wildfire32.png" 
menu="menuOplayers" config="com/esri/solutions/flexviewer/widgets/LiveLayerWidgetWildfires.xml">
com/esri/solutions/flexviewer/widgets/LiveLayerWidget.swf</widget>

Note that by clicking on the orange arrow that you will be taken to the hyperlink for more information. In this case the hyperlink leads to the National Interagency Fire Center. This technique can be used to highlight any of the dynamic data from the NHSS ArcGIS Server layers.

In summary the Natural Hazard Support System provides a wealth of information and you should visit the site often to keep abreast of current hazard information. For more details about this application click here - http://nhss.cr.usgs.gov/contactus.shtml. Furthermore if you're already using other applications like the Emergency Management Template COP or the Flex Sample Viewer you can easily add the services from the USGS NHSS application.

Geometric networks for water utilities

mmiller@esri.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:48:00 GMT

Whether you are implementing GIS in your water, wastewater or stormwater utility and creating a data model for the first time or you are updating your existing GIS datamodel, you will no doubt ask yourself this question -

How should I model my utility's asset in a geometric network and why should I use a geometric network? You should model a Geometric networks can enable utility system tracing, error checking, and better productivity while editing.

But how should I build it. That one simple question spawns many sub questions. Should I use complex edges, what edge to junction or edge to edge rules should I implement? What are weights? Should I worry about cardinality? We get these questions or have this conversation all the time with utilities and partners.

Below, you will find information and some guidance to help you answer these questions. Also, we always recommend that you read through ESRI's webhelp as a starting point on geometric on networks:

http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/body.cfm?tocVisable=1&ID=6764&TopicName=What%20is%20a%20geometric%20network?

First, you will need to create your network. When creating your network, you have a few options. The most important are choosing which layers participate in the geometric network and what layers, if any, are sources or sinks.

So what layers should you include in your geometric network? Keep in mind that the geometric network should encapsulate how your distribution or collection systems actually operate. So include only layers that participate in the logic network - or to think of it another way the layers that include assets that determine how your collection or distribution system function.

These typically are mains, valves, fittings, hydrants, laterals, virtual lines, manholes, catch basins, etc. Since the geometric network should only contain layers that affect the network, a change in geometry or information can affect analysis on that network. Data like Leaks, or SCADA sensor locations, are operational data sets. It is showing some incident on the network or some value or reading of the network. So these operational layers should be included in the operations dataset and not in the geometic network.

In order to create a geometric network, you'll need to have a feature dataset which contains all of the feature classes for that network. You'll also need at least the ArcEditor level of ArcGIS Desktop. When prompted to build the geometric network from existing features or an empty network or to create an empty network, you'll typically choose the first option.

After you determine the layers that should be part of your geometric network, you need to think about how you are going to model flow. When setting sources or sinks, make sure to only set one of these. This is critically important, and a mistake that we see all too often. Do not set one feature as source and another as sinks. You only need one and having both in a geometric network for water, wastewater or stormwater will lead to odd network behaviors. Typically the NetworkStructure feature class or similar feature class containing a relatively small number of points is used. While creating the network you don't specify whether it is a source or sink just that it could be one or the other. This adds a field called AncillaryRole to any feature classes you specify. Later, in ArcMap you can set the value of this field for individual features to source, sink or none. These values can be used to establish flow direction for the non-looped portion of your network. You could instead choose to use the digitized direction of your lines to establish flow direction, in this case sources and sinks are not used.

After the geometric network has been created, you need to set up the core properties of the network.

Let's first think about complex edges versus simple edges. This is an easy one to make a decision on. In a geometric network, a simple edge must be split at every junction, so every valve, manhole, fitting, etc, on an edge, splits that edge. Complex edges allow one segment to have many junctions on top of it and it does not require that segment to be split. And by split, I mean separate records in the geodatabase. Usually, complex edges only are used on your mains and laterals for water, sewer, and storm. This allows you to model your segments by the method defined by your utility - meaning that there is no standard industry definition for what a "pipe segment" is and we often see utilities making a conscious decision for how they want to define a pipe segment and use that definition across all of their operation and business systems. We have seen people model laterals as simple edges. Typically, simple edges are used here because the lateral and the connection point (meter, service connection) is a representation of the actual meter and lateral. The representation allows you to perform tracing through the network to the meter and connect the meter id to a billing or customer system.

Next we need to determine whether to set connectivity rules. Keep this in mind - if you set just one connectivity rule in your geometric network and wish to use the validation tools, then you need to set up all the rules. This can be a complex process to figure out how all your assets connect in every situation-. Despite being complex to implement and maintain, there are certainly large benefits to using connectivity rules.

Connectivity rules allow you to model the logic connection of your network. To support all connection types, you need to make sure your datamodel will support this. Connectivity rules can leverage a geodatabase design element called subtypes. Subtype allow more complex modeling of your data so that within a feature class, features are assigned to a subtype which may have different default values, different domains, and different connectivity rules than the other subtypes within that feature class. The example template geodatabase is simplified and doesn't include any subtypes. This means that for connectivity purposes a fitting is just a fitting not a tee, bend, or cap. Likewise for connectivity purposes a lateral line is just lateral line not a hydrant lateral or service lateral. With a more detailed design which includes subtypes you can make more extensive use of connectivity rules. That is you could have a rule that says a hydrant must connect to a hydrant lateral line and that a hydrant lateral line must connect to one hydrant. You could also specify that a hydrant feature be added by default at the free end of a hydrant lateral and that a tap fitting be placed automatically where the lateral line connects to the main. You could set up a similar set of rules for service lines and meters.

Within connectivity rules, there is an option to set cardinality. So you can go beyond just how your assets can connect and you can define how many assets can connect to each other. Let's think about fittings again, with subtypes for fittings, you could specify that a tee fitting must connect to 3 pipes, an end cap to 1 pipe, etc. So you can see that to model proper cardinality, you need to model your data in a way to properly define the number each asset can connect to.

With a simple data model, like the data model that is included with the Water Utility Resource Center templates, you can still set a connectivity rule if desired. For instance, you can specify that wLateralLine should connect to a wMain and by default a fitting must be added.

Some of the Edit Tools in the Network Editing Template are designed to assist with automation and basic connectivity testing without the use of geodatabase connectivity rules. For example, the connectivity checker tool merely looks at feature types and makes sure they logically connect to each other. So if you want to use connectivity to enhance your editing experience, you can do so, without modeling connectivity to represent every asset's connectivity restrictions in the geodatabase. For instance, you can model a hydrant to a lateral to a main and not worry about modeling everything, you will just have some connectivity errors when you validate, which you can choose to ignore.

Next, you will see an option for setting weights. Geometric network weights can be used in two ways. Weights can be a filter, tracing only features with matched values. This is somewhat advanced and is used primarily in telecom and electric networks. Weights can also be used to aggregate flow. This is second usage is helpful for wastewater and storm water networks where flow direction is known - that is the non-looped portion of the network. Using trace weights, we can accumulate flow upstream from a specified location. You might add a trace weight on the length of your gravity mains and laterals in order to later obtain the total length of pipes upstream from a given location. You might also add a field to your wastewater lateral points representing estimated gallons entering the system. By creating a trace weight on this field, you can summarize gallons at any point in your network using the Find Upstream Accumulation trace task on the Utility Network Analyst toolbar. If desired, the system could then store these values of accumulated flow along your network in the manholes and gravity mains. For an example of this, see the Calculate Accumulation script:

http://arcscripts/details.asp?dbid=14481

In short, weights are typically not used for most utilities. You can see that they do provide some advance functions but are not required to model and work with a geometric network.

Lastly, we like to recommend that if you are tackling some of these issues, that you take ESRI training so you can understand all of the implications of what we've discussed in this blog. The proper training or consulting help with creating your datamodel or implementing the geometric network will undoubtedly save you a lot of time and money when your data model is in production.

Hey! I can see my house from here

jhincy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:54:00 GMT

by Jeff Hincy

Have you ever wondered how film makers get all that fancy imagery in their movies? You would assume it costs thousands of dollars and they have to jump through hoops to get it. Well you too can be a multi-million dollar film maker with the imagery that comes standard with Business Analyst Desktop.

Ok, well maybe that is not entirely true, but you can access some of the latest satellite and aerial imagery with the click of a few buttons. The ImageConnect toolbar in Business Analyst Desktop is a gateway to some of the best imagery in the business provided by DigitalGlobe.

Recently we have added a new dataset of imagery to Business Analyst through the ImageConnect toolbar. It provides our clients with the most up to date imagery that DigitalGlobe has to offer. It ranges from complete aerial coverage of the United States at up to 1 meter resolution to .3 meter satellite imagery taken from the QuickBird satellite that contains "deep strip coverage of urban, rural and coastal areas." You can investigate a new market using imagery as recent as last quarter.

For those of you who have not explored this incredible resource yet, the ImageConnect toolbar is included with Business Analyst Desktop. It allows you to connect directly to the DigitalGlobe image server and download high resolution satellite and aerial imagery directly into your map and save them for later analysis and viewing. As long as you have internet access you have unlimited access to these images.

The imagery accessed from the ImageConnect toolbar contains not only the most current imagery but historical imagery that can be used to see things such as construction trends in a market. It is also important to note that before downloading your image you should examine the available imagery in your market to decide which attribute is the most important for your analysis. Sometimes vintage is the most important attribute but other times resolution can as or more important. By default the ImageConnect toolbar will select an image based on a combination of attributes such as resolution, data source, and vintage. To view a list of available imagery simply click the ImageConnect button and then select ImageConnect Data Library. From this dialog you will a list of the available imagery at your current map scale and you can select the appropriate image to download for your analysis.

You might be curious how to access this wonderful new data update. Let me show you how to access it.

Step 1: Launch Business Analyst.

Step 2: From the Main Menu you will see an ImageConnect menu option. Click the ImageConnect button and select ImageConnect Properties.

Step 3: From the Data Layers drop-down menu select Country Coverage and hit OK.

That's it you are done. You will have to do this for each computer that Business Analyst is installed on and these preferences will be saved so you won't have to go back and do this again.

-Jeff

ESRI MapIt version 1.1 is available!

rexhansen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:36:00 GMT

We're proud to announce that version 1.1 of ESRI MapIt is now available for download. Over the last four months, the MapIt product has been refined and optimized, and includes a multitude of enhancements. Here's a quick look at what's new with MapIt features:

The Spatial Data Assistant supports working with SQL Azure databases; using custom ArcGIS Server locators for address matching; and viewing a subset of table data when selecting match fields.
The Spatial Data Service supports deployment into Windows Azure; use of GeoFields, which are fields that contain latitude and longitude values outside of the spatial geometry column type; and multiple spatial columns in a single table or view.
The ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF supports Silverlight 3, integrates with the Expression Blend 3 design experience, includes a set of pre-packaged Silverlight templates, and supports the use of the Expression Blend Behaviors API.
ESRI Parts for Microsoft SharePoint includes an enhanced configuration experience for the Map Web Part and two new components, a Geolist Web Part and Location Map data type. The Geolist displays interactive attributes for SharePoint lists rendered in a Map Web Part. The Location Map data type provides an interactive map to define locations in a list item.

We encourage you to download, install, discover and use the new MapIt product.

Enjoy!

The MapIt Development Team

ESRI Parts for Microsoft SharePoint version 1.1 is available!

rexhansen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:34:00 GMT

We're proud to introduce a new resource center for Microsoft SharePoint administrators, contributors, and users who want to integrate rich mapping functionality in their SharePoint sites. Go to the ESRI Parts for Microsoft SharePoint resource center you can read about, discover, and download version 1.1 of ESRI's SharePoint solution. This latest edition includes a bounty of exciting enhancements and updates. Here's a quick look at what's new:

The ESRI Map Web Part offers a host of enhancements and new features. For example, you can map Microsoft Office forms and document libraries, use a custom ArcGIS Server base map or locator, and configure clustering symbology or render point data as heatmaps.
A new ESRI Geolist Web Part provides an interactive and multi-functional tabular view of SharePoint lists that have been added to an associated Map Web Part.
A new ESRI Location Map Field allows you to add a field to a SharePoint list that shows the location of each item in the list on an interactive map. You can modify the address match properties, view the coordinates of match location, and interactively adjust the location.
Use the configuration utility included with the download to specify Bing Maps credentials and make it the default for entire site collections, web applications, or SharePoint farms; configure shared properties using administrative SharePoint lists created by the ESRI Parts; and upgrade from version 1.0 (ESRI Map Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint) to 1.1.

Version 1.1 of ESRI Parts can be deployed with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.

We encourage you to explore the new resource center, download and deploy the solution, and start using maps in your SharePoint apps.

Enjoy!

The ESRI SharePoint Development Team

The ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF version 1.1 is available!

rexhansen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:01:00 GMT

Version 1.1 of the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF is now available for download on the ArcGIS Server Resource Center. The API includes a set of feature, functionality, and integration enhancments. One notable difference; you'll download a setup executable which will install and configure Silverlight and WPF assemblies, components, and templates with Expression Blend and Visual Studio. Here are a few highlights of what's new:

Silverlight 3 is now required with version 1.1. Silverlight 2 is no longer supported.
Silverlight 3 supports element binding, which means you can bind the Map property of a Navigation control to a Map using XAML - no code behind.
A complete, interactive design-time experience in Expression Blend 3. You can drag, drop, and configure ArcGIS Silverlight and WPF controls on the artboard.
A set of Silverlight templates are integrated with Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2008. The templates provide a pre-configured, pre-styled, customizable architecture that enables you to create production worthy mapping applications quickly and easily.
Expression Blend 3 introduced behaviors, which are reusable pieces of packaged code that define interactive relationships between controls using XAML. A new ArcGIS Silverlight and WPF library, ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.Behaviors.dll, includes a set of behaviors and actions to define interactive relationships between user input and Map behavior and content.

We invite you to try the new Interactive SDK to see the new features and functionality in action. In addition, we've created an interactive Symbol Gallery for you to peruse and copy marker, line, and fill symbols for use in your application.

Enjoy!

The ArcGIS Silverlight/WPF Development Team

Are you in the ArcGIS 9.4 Beta Program?

nfurness — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:46:00 GMT

The Support Blog has just posted some details about the 9.4 Beta Program covering, amongst other things, what's included and who's eligible to join. In general, if you're currently on maintenance or an EDN subscriber, you qualify.

It highlights that the 9.4 Beta is:

Available for download
Fully supported by ESRI Technical Support
Accompanied by new 9.4 Resource Centers, also in Beta state

As a developer however, here's a few points regarding how the program can help you...

Early Access
First off, you get to try all of the new features in 9.4 early, like the new UI enhancements, the integrated search, map publishing, new Time support, and the new reporting system. In addition you'll have full access to the new APIs.

Migration Planning
Equally important is that by getting your hands on the software so early you can get a great head start on planning your upgrade/migration strategy. This should help you with:

Focusing your testing
Automating installation
Measuring performance improvements
Assessing or re-assessing dependencies
Migrating sooner after the final 9.4 release

And let's not forget the day-to-day activities; you'll be able to check that the new products hook into things like your automated build or continuous integration frameworks as expected.

Developer Community
With the dedicated 9.4 Beta Resource Centers, blogs and forums you can get involved with the community and share your tips and discoveries with other early adopters.

Direct Support
And with the active online support model build into the beta program, you'll be able to interact with Support staff directly.

Take the poll to the right, and let us know in the comments how the beta program is working for you!

Now you can create your own Business Analyst Online!

jkillick — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:22:00 GMT

by James Killick

Ever looked at Business Analyst Online and wanted to embed the same kind of functionality into your own site? Well now you can with the new API to Business Analyst Online!

The great new service allows web developers to simply call our REST or SOAP APIs to create ring or drive time trade areas and generate the same reports that you get out of Business Analyst Online.

Typical use cases include Economic Development Agencies that want to drive business to their cities... now they can easily create an interactive web site that allows users to search/browse available properties in the area and find out more about the people, places and businesses in the vicinity of each property... just like in Business Analyst Online...

A great example is the City of Miami which is now using the Business Analyst Online API for their own public facing site selection tool. See the screen shot below. You can check it out at www.miami-sites.com

We're making this new API available via an ArcGIS Online package called "USA Business Analyst Reporting". This package bundles the API with ArcGIS Online Street Maps, Imagery, Demographic Maps + Geocoding. (BTW - you can also use the API with your own favorite online maps too - but you'll need to get the appropriate license from the third party).

Using this API you can easily (and quickly) develop rich Internet apps in Flex, JavaScript or Silverlight that incorporate Business Analyst functionality... for more details go here for general info and here for the detailed technical stuff.

Cheers,

-James.

Looping through graphics using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript

Kelly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:27:00 GMT

When working with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript you'll often find yourself looping through arrays, like the collection of graphics stored in a graphics layer or the results of a QueryTask. In this post we'll explore two approaches for looping through arrays; using a standard for loop and working with a dojo implementation of one of the JavaScript Array Extras.

For Loop

First lets look at using a for loop to add query task results to a map. The results of QueryTask are returned as an array of Graphic features so we can use a for loop to iterate through the task results and add each graphic to the map.

 dojo.connect(queryTask,"onComplete",function(featureSet){
   for(var i=0; i < featureSet.features.length; i++){
     map.graphics.add(featureSet.features[i]);
   })

We can optimize the code a bit by storing the length of the array in a variable. Then the length of the array doesn't need to be recalculated on each loop. The stored length (il) is just compared to the value of the counter(i).

 for (var i=0; il = featureSet.features.length; i < il; i++){

JavaScript Array Extras

The JavaScript array extras are useful functions for working with arrays and are part of ECMAScript 5th Edition, the next revision of the standards on which JavaScript is based. The revised standard is still under development so not all browsers support this functionality. Thankfully Dojo has implemented similar functions as part of Dojo Core so we can take advantage of one of the array extras, dojo.forEach, to simplify the process of looping through an array of graphics. Dojo.forEach runs a function on each item in the array.

 dojo.connect(queryTask,"onComplete",function(featureSet){
   dojo.forEach (featureSet.features, function(feature) {
     map.graphics.add(feature);
   });
 });

Note that we no longer need the counter and array length variable which makes the code easier to read and can help avoid the following problems:

Off-by-one errors
Overwriting a global variable by forgetting to declare the loop counter as a local variable using the var keyword.

If you do need access to the iterator you can specify an additional argument to the function. This argument provides access to the current position in the array.

 dojo.forEach(featureSet.features,function(feature,index){
   //do something with the index here

Comparison reports have a lot more to offer! – Part I

SJ92373 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:25:00 GMT

by Sooria Jeyaraman

By now I’m sure you must have explored the new comparison reports in Business Analyst Online, if not I would strongly urge you to do so. It is one of our marquee features that some of our users are craving for. I will let you know some more tricks in the feature that will make your job easier. Hypothetical scenario – I am interested in a couple of locations near Mira mesa, San Diego. I want to know about the demographics of people living in 5, 10, 15 minute drive time of this location. I also want to know how these locations fare in comparison with its ZIP code, County and also benchmark it against my successful location in Redlands.

Hmmm.. how could I do this? Do I need to create all these as separate sites and get reports and add them manually in excel to compare!! No that’s when our new comparison reports come to your rescue. Let’s first create the two drive time sites.

Now go to “Get Reports” tab, click “Create Comparison Reports” and these two sites will be automatically selected in the site panel, add your successful Redlands site to it. These three sites will be shown in step 1 as sites selected.

On step 2 open the ZIP code dropdown, now that lists all the ZIP codes that your sites belong too (sweet huh!), select your desired ZIP code and now move on to the County dropdown which will list all the counties that your sites belong too, pick your interested county.

Now move on to step 3, an option to pick your benchmark. Open the dropdown and you can see all the sites selected, its respective geographies and not just that you have options to benchmark it against the “Average” and “Median” of your selected sites. Now for our walkthrough let’s pick your successful Redlands site.

On step 4 let’s say we are interested to look at the Income variables, go ahead and click the “Income” button. Here’s what you would get once you click the button in step 4.

You get an UI with the graphs with the benchmarked site as the first site and your selected sites with the ZIP code and county of your selection. It’ll be better if I explain each of the elements on this page one by one with highlights.

1. View toggle button lets you switch between this graph view and a tabular view where you can just look at the sites and variables in plain numbers in a table format.

2. Variables dropdown lets you select/deselect the variables you would like to be displayed in the graph/table.

3. Graph legend represents each variable and the bar color associated with it

4. Year toggle lets you see our five year projection for the selected variables.

5. Dropdowns below each site name lets you change the individual drive time to be displayed in the graph.

6. Finally you can also print and save the information in excel for further reference.

On the top you have tabs to switch between our other popular variables “Population” “Households” “Housing” and the last tab “Customize” lets you create your own set of variables – more on that in my next blog on the same subject, watch out.

Before you go, I would also suggest you to visit our friend and fellow blogger Kyle’s scribbling in his blog post about benchmark report in Business Analyst Desktop.

http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/businessanalyst/archive/2009/09/29/The-Fabulous-Benchmark-Report.aspx

Happy Comparing!

- SJ

GIS Training Plan for Water, Wastewater and Stormwater Utilities

hcrothers — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:23:00 GMT

One of the things we can’t stress enough is the importance of GIS training for water, wastewater and stormwater utilities. The proper skill sets are critical to the success of any GIS implementation or operation and training is one of the ways a water utility can ensure they have the proper organizational skill sets to capitalize on their investment in GIS.

As a best practice, ESRI recommends that our water, wastewater and stormwater utility customers plan for their training needs. This includes both short term training needs to support a GIS implementation or a specific GIS project and long term training needs to ensure that a water utility can support their enterprise GIS progression.

Some of the typical benefits of GIS training for water utilities are faster GIS deployment, significantly reduced potential for mistakes (both GIS software use mistakes and GIS deployment mistakes), best practice enterprise architectures, better workflows and improved data QA & QC which ultimately yield a better return on your investment in GIS. We seen many utilities that continue to develop their employee’s GIS skills reap the benefits of faster enterprise deployments that are more soundly planned for.

During the past few years, ESRI’s Training Group has created a large number of training plans for water utilities. The plans were created through a consultative process where our training group would spend time working with a utility to ensure they had the necessary organizational skills to support their GIS plans. Through this process ESRI identified some patterns in the training needs of water utilities. These patterns included common GIS training classes taken by certain water utility staff roles, the relationship between size of a water utility and training needs and the sequencing of water utility GIS training.

From the experience of our training group coupled with typical GIS deployment patterns, core water utility functional areas, and best practices for water utility GIS, ESRI has now created a Generic GIS Staff Development Plan for Water Utilities. You can download the plan from the attachment link below this post.

After you download the Generic Staff Plan, we suggest you first read the Document Purpose section. This explains how the document is intended to be used. Since this is a generic document, we suggest that you contact an ESRI Training Consultant to help you customize this training plan to your utility. We’ve also created the plan to be a living document, so we’ll be updating the plan regularly as ESRI continues to expand our training offerings and the field of water, wastewater and storm GIS continues to evolve.

Web Mapping Applications made easy with Eclipse ArcGIS plug-ins

dano — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:58:00 GMT

In this post we will discuss how to install and set up the ESRI Java Web ADF plug-in using Eclipse Ganymede. Once, we have the plug-in installed, we will set out to use the features by creating a Web Mapping Application (WMA) and extend our WMA with a Query Task functionality.

Setting Eclipse ArcGIS Preference

Before beginning any project, it can be useful to set up common preferences for the new project wizards. Click Window > Preferences from the main menu in Eclipse. Select ArcGIS > Server from the left panel of the dialog box. The connection information entered here will be used by the project wizards. You can specify information needed to connect to some of the more commonly used servers such as ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS, and ArcGIS Web services. Each time you are prompted to add a data source, it will be automatically pre-populated with these values.

You can also check the box to Show New Project Wizard Advanced Options. This will provide a couple of extra steps in the wizard for further customization if needed. By default this is unchecked.

Setting up an Eclipse Server Runtime with Tomcat

In order to test and publish web applications on your application server through Eclipse, you need to define one or more resources by installing the application server and installing the appropriate server runtime in Eclipse. Although you can set up any supported application server which supports Eclipse server runtimes, in this example we will publish our WMA to Apache Tomcat. Once installed, it is also important to make sure that Tomcat is set to use a 1.5.x or higher JDK. You should check by using the Configure Tomcat shortcut from the Tomcat install to display the properties dialog below. Click the Java tab and make sure the Java Virtual Machine is set to a jvm.dll located in a 1.5.x JDK.

More information about using Tomcat in Eclipse can be found on the Eclipse wiki.

To set up Tomcat server runtime in Eclipse, there are a few simple steps:

Click Windows > Preferences from the Eclipse toolbar. In the Preferences dialog box, expand the Server option and select Installed Runtimes. Click the Add button.

Navigate to the appropriate Apache Tomcat server and click Next.

Click the Browse button and locate the Tomcat installation directory on your file system. Click the Installed JREs button to add a JDK as the default JRE. Check an appropriate JDK or click Add and browse for a JDK. Click OK to close the Preferences dialog box.

The dialog box appears as follows. Click Finish. Your Tomcat Server runtime is ready to be used when creating new projects.

Install ArcGIS Server for Java Web ADF plug-in
This section contains instructions on how to install/update the plug-in from ESRI update center.

Select Help > Software Updates > from the Eclipse toolbar (1) if you have an ArcGIS Eclipse Plug-in installed and are upgrading. Click the Installed Software tab, find ArcGIS Core and ArcGIS Server entry, right click on each and choose Update. Eclipse will go to the pre-defined update site to get the latest plug-ins. (2) If this is your first time installing the ArcGIS Server for Java Eclipse plug-in, click the Available Software tab, and click the Add Site button on the right.

Next, click the Local button to browse to the plug-in location on disk, make sure to browse to the Server folder level in your ArcGIS Server for Java directory.

You should now see ArcGIS added to the available software list. Check ArcGIS Core and ArcGIS Server and click Install. Once installation is complete, click Finish and follow the prompt to restart Eclipse by clicking OK.

Create a new ArcGIS Web ADF project
This section contains instructions for creating a new Eclipse project based on ESRI Web Project Template.

Create a new project by clicking File > New > Project and choose ESRI Web Project under ESRI Templates. Click Next and give your project a name.

Make sure to choose a Target Runtime, for example, the Apache Tomcat server runtime we set up in previous steps.

In the New ArcGIS Web Project Window, double click Add GIS Server node.

Enter the server connection credentials and click OK. This should be pre-populated with the credentials set in the preferences dialog.

Choose a service from the list and add it to the webcontext. Click Finish to complete.
Right click the project name in the Project Explorer panel, Run As > Run on Server. Pick a server and hit Finish. To view the site in an external browser, go Window > Web Browser, choose anyone other than the Internal Web Browser.

At this point, you should have a WMA running with all the default features offered by the plug-in. In our next section, we will add a Query Task to the WMA and test it again.

Add a query task
This section contains instructions on how to add a query task to the web application.

In the right hand project file list, expand your project to open the mapviewer.jsp under WebContent. Once the source opens up, scroll down to the line where it says <a:task id="searchAttributesTask" . . .> (this is typically around line 123).
Place your cursor in front of this line and right click ArcGIS > Add Task > Query Attributes ...

Now configure the query task. Click the Settings tab, pick a Map Service and pick a layer. Next to Query Expression, click Add.
In the New Expression window, pick a Field to query against and either type in the value to query or select from a list of sample values. Click OK, and OK on the Add Query Task window.
Inspect your extended mapviewer.jsp source file. You should see the query task added and the query link added to the task menu bar.
Run the application again and test your query task.

You now have a WMA with an extended Query Task enabled all without writing a single line of code. The ESRI ArcGIS Server for Java plug-in hides the complexity of many features which enables you as the developer to quickly create production quality web mapping applications.

Contributing Author, Li Linn, ESRI Java Development Team

FAQs on ArcGIS Server Java Platform

ajoseph — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:25:00 GMT

The product management team created a list of most frequently asked questions (ofcourse, along with our answers) to help our users. The list below covers a few generic questions on ArcGIS Server Java platform at 9.3.1.

Q: What enhancements have been made for the ArcGIS Java Platform overall at 9.3.1?

A: ArcGIS for the Java platform is a complete geospatial platform for Java. It is complete from the aspect of its support at the all levels of the GIS enterprise: From the Desktop, to embedded systems, all the way through to the Server. Java programmers and technologists can engineer world-class GIS solutions from Java Standard Edition (SE) applications to the Java Enterprise Edition (EE) Applications and system integration, across all of ESRI’s supported platforms: Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Up until 9.3.1, while the ArcObjects platform was available in Java to be consumed at all of these system tiers, customization and extensibility was not clearly supported, and was completely unsupported for the Linux and Solaris platforms. At 9.3.1, however, this has changed. At this release, the ArcGIS platform can be extended by Java developers using standard Java tools and deployment strategies. This technology allows for Java classes to be recognized within the ArcObjects processes as true COM objects. The significance of this technology enhancement can be described in a number of ways. Specifically, developers of Java solutions now have more choices for performance and memory optimization when architecting their applications. The Desktop can be extended, as well as the in-process ArcObjects Engine applications. But most importantly, the ArcGIS Server can now be extended to handle complex geoprocessing and data access business logic in the server, rather than in the web tier. This allows for huge gains in performance and scaleability for ArcGIS Server Java applications.

Q: Are the Windows, Solaris, and Linux versions of ArcGIS Server functionally the same?

A: No. At 9.3.1, there are a number of differences in functionality between the Windows and Linux/Solaris version of ArcGIS Server. The following table lists some of the known functionality/capability differences between Windows, Linux and Solaris. Most (if not all) of these items have been publicly documented in various forms throughout the on-line support resources and software product documentation.

These differences are not expected to change for 9.4.

	Windows	Linux	Solaris 9	Solaris 10
Authoring Map Services	Yes	No	No	No
Data Interoperability Extension support	Yes	No	No	No
Image Server Extension support (Server-side only) *	Yes	No	No	No
Geostatistical Analyst Extension support	Yes	No	No	No
Schematics Extension support	Yes	No	No	No
Mobile services	Yes	No	No	No
Direct Connect to Oracle	Yes	Yes	No	No
High-quality MapServer output **	Yes	Yes	No	Yes **
Retaining ODBC-based table joins in MXD when moving MXD from Windows	Yes	No	No	No
Retaining File-based table joins in MXD when moving MXD from Windows	Yes	No	No	No
Personal Geodatabase support	Yes	No	No	No
ERMapper ECW format support	Yes	No	No	No

* Image Server client libraries are supported on Windows/Linux/Solaris

** With respect to Solaris 9, there was a known limitation with the mapserver output quality of some cartographic elements. A patched Solaris 10 release, post June 2007, took care of the problem. There is no workaround for Solaris 9.

The Solaris version must be a release done later than June 2007 or have the following OS patches present on the system:

125100-04 Kernel Update Patch
120473-05 libc nss ldap PAM zfs Patch
125800-01 Fault Manager Patch

Q: Do you (ESRI) have any benchmarks testing ArcGIS Server Java on Windows vs Linux?

A: Performance differences between running ArcGIS Server for Java on Windows versus Linux have been observed. At the risk of oversimplifying, we will share some findings: Intensive CPU operations at the Server Object Container tier tend to be faster on Windows, due to slight overheads produced by MainWin dependencies on our core ArcObjects components. Operations such as sophisticated on the fly mapping and CPU intensive geoprocessing operations incur into performance hits that can reach up to 30 or even 40% on non Windows platforms. Disk IO intensive operations tend to be however faster on LINUX. For example, accessing map tiles from a cached map service in LINUX tends to be more efficient than on Windows. The above differences apply to the ArcGIS Server for Java and do not aim to compare performance on the .Net and Java flavors of ArcGIS Server.

Q: Is a mixed platform configuration like SOM on a Linux Box and SOC(s) on a Windows box supported with ArcGIS Server?

A: No, neither can the reverse scenario be supported. The reason for this is that file paths cannot be properly reconciled in communication between a Linux SOM and a Windows SOC. For example, SOC needs to know the absolute path for the server’s log file. The Linux SOM cannot communicate a Linux pathname to a Windows SOC, nor the reverse.

Q: Do you support setting up the server in a clustered environment?

A: Yes. ArcGIS Server is architected to support clustering, failover and round robin. For a complete discussion, please see the following links:

http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisserver/9.3/dotNet/index.htm#guide_config_hardware.htm

http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisserver/9.3/java/guide_config_hardware.htm

Q: Do the Eclipse plug-ins for the Java WebADF work with JBuilder 2008 or IBM’s RAD 7?

A: ESRI does not officially support these configurations. However, our plug-ins can be used in both IDE’s with additional configuration steps.

Content contributed by Eric Bader, Product Manager for ArcGIS Java platform

ArcGIS API for Flex: Version 1.3 released today

sterlingdq — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:00:00 GMT

It’s been just over one year since we released the first version of the ArcGIS API for Flex. Since then we’ve seen an amazing interest in our Flex API. Many users have created great web applications with the API, and the Flex forum is now the most active of all the ArcGIS Server forums.

Today we are pleased to announce the release of ArcGIS API for Flex 1.3. This API release is a minor release but has several useful "goodies".

Here’s a short summary of what’s new in version 1.3:

Support for Adobe’s Flex 3.4 SDK. The older versions 3.0 thru 3.3 are still supported.
Additional styling options for InfoContainer (used by InfoWindow and InfoSymbol).
More miscellaneous API improvements and bug fixes.
Well-known ID 102100 (WGS_1984_Web_Mercator_Auxiliary_Sphere) is now a supported projection for Web Mercator-based overlays (including Bing Maps). It is now also used in WebMercatorUtil for projecting coordinates between Geographic and Web Mercator.
New and updated samples.

Please read the more complete list of 1.3 API changes in the What's New page in our Resource Center.

Contributed by Bjorn Svensson of the ArcGIS API for Flex development team

We've got software in the oven...

kwatsonESRI — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:45:00 GMT

by Kyle Watson

Hi there reader,

Just wanted to drop a line about new desktop software releases forthcoming in November, both will be released at the same time.

Business Analyst 9.3.1 Service Pack 1 - AKA BA931SP1. This will be an MSP setup (so the same style as a standard ArcGIS service pack) that you can install directly from the automatic Check for BA Updates utility or download it from our Support Center page. The service pack will fix a variety of basic maintenance items as well as some key issues found by clients that we didn't know about at first. We have a couple "hotfixes" out there now, not to worry - those will be included in the service pack.

Business Analyst 9.3.1 for Canada with 2009 Data - If you didn't know we create a Canadian version of Business Analyst - we do - right here in Redlands. If you have both the US and Canadian version installed on one machine, you just toggle between country-specific datasets to run reports and analyses. The 2009 product is based on Canada's newest census information. We'll have this next incarnation coming to you shortly.

So keep an eye out for new Business Analyst 9.3.1 software in mid-November...more details to follow...

All the best,

Kyle

SNaC-ing on Geodatabases

JonMurphy — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:32:00 GMT

If you want to use Microsoft's geometry or geography spatial types with ArcGIS 9.3.1, you should install the SQL Server 2008 Native Client on your ArcGIS client computers. Not everyone will run into a problem when querying the geometry and geography types in SQL Server 2008 from ESRI software; it depends on how up-to-date your Windows system is. However, if you get a deferred prepare error when displaying or querying feature classes that contain Microsoft geometry or geography columns AND a SQL trace...(read more)

Working with info windows in the ArcGIS JavaScript API

sterlingdq — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:11:00 GMT

An easy way to add interactivity to your ArcGIS JavaScript applications is through info windows that display information in response to a user action. From working with other APIs, you might know info windows as "balloons", "map tips", "callouts", or "popups". The concept is the same: the user clicks or hovers over a location on the map and sees HTML-based information about that particular location.

How does an info window work in the ArcGIS JavaScript API?

In the ArcGIS JavaScript API, the Map has an InfoWindow that can be shown or hidden in response to events.

Every info window has a title and content. The title is the bold text that appears at the top of the info window. The content is the HTML that appears below. When you work with info windows, you’ll frequently call methods to set the title and content.

The default event when a graphic is clicked is to show an info window. However, in order for this to happen, you need to have defined an InfoTemplate for the graphic. The InfoTemplate specifies the title and content that should be used in any info windows that result from clicking the graphics.

You can use the notation ${<FIELD>} to pull attributes directly into an info template.

var infoTemplate = new esri.InfoTemplate();
infoTemplate.setTitle("${NAME}");
infoTemplate.setContent("<b>2000 Population: </b>${POP2000}<br/>"
        + "<b>2000 Population per Sq. Mi.: </b>${POP00_SQMI}<br/>"
        + "<b>2007 Population: </b>${POP2007}<br/>"
        + "<b>2007 Population per Sq. Mi.: </b>${POP07_SQMI}");

This code would create an info window similar to what you see below.

You can handle a graphics layer’s onClick event yourself to show an info window. This can be useful if you need to use JavaScript in some way to construct what you put in the info window. The following function does some math to calculate the population density when a user clicks the graphics layer. The population density is then reported through an info window using the Map.infoWindow.setTitle() and Map.infoWindow.setContent() methods.

dojo.connect(myGraphicsLayer, "onClick", function(evt) {
  var graphicAttributes = evt.graphic.attributes;
  var title = graphicAttributes.NAME;
  var populationDensity = graphicAttributes.POP2007 / graphicAttributes.SQMI;
  var content = "The population density in 2007 is <i>" + populationDensity.toFixed(2); + "</i>.";
  map.infoWindow.setTitle(title);
  map.infoWindow.setContent(content);
  map.infoWindow.show(evt.screenPoint,map.getInfoWindowAnchor(evt.screenPoint));
});

These Map.infoWindow.setTitle() and Map.infoWindow.setContent methods are also handy if you want to show an info window in response to a query or some other action that doesn’t involve a graphic. Here’s a function designed to show an info window with lat/lon coordinates when the user clicks anywhere on the map.

dojo.connect(map, "onClick", addPoint);
function addPoint(evt) {
  map.infoWindow.setTitle("Coordinates");
  map.infoWindow.setContent("lat/lon : " + evt.mapPoint.y + ", " + evt.mapPoint.x);
  map.infoWindow.show(evt.screenPoint,map.getInfoWindowAnchor(evt.screenPoint));
}

What can you do with info windows?

You can put almost anything in an info window because it displays HTML. Images, hyperlinks, tables, dynamically rendered charts, and any other type of element that can be requested or created with HTML can be placed in an info window.

You can take advantage of Dojo libraries to enhance your info windows. This picture shows information organized in a Dojo TabContainer in the info window.

Here’s a chart dynamically constructed for an InfoWindow using the Dojo charting library:

Just because you can put something in an info window doesn’t always mean that you should. The BorderContainer and other elements in the Dojo layout libraries can help you organize information in sidebars, footers, and accordion containers on your page. (See this post for an introduction to Dojo layouts.) In some scenarios these might be more efficient than an info window.

The application pictured below avoids info windows in favor of a right-hand content pane containing charts and other information. Click the image if you're interested in downloading the code.

Designing a good info window

Although info windows can display all kinds of content, you should not use info windows as a "dumping ground" for information. A well-designed info window has:

A descriptive title – Keep the title short and clear
Formatting that is easy on the eyes - A few well-placed spaces, tabs, or line breaks can go a long way toward making the content easy to read.
Clear labels for attributes - A non-GIS user looking at your application may not understand raw field names such as "PARCEL_NO". Instead, use clear descriptions or field aliases, such as "Parcel number". Avoid the ${*} shortcut that lists all field/value pairs.
Attributes that are important to the end user – Many GIS datasets contain fields that are only of interest to a GIS analyst, not end users. "OBJECTID" is one example of a field that should probably never appear in a public-facing application.
A manageable amount of information - Use tabs, sidebars, data grids, or links to other HTML pages if your info windows are getting too crowded and require the user to scroll.

Contributed by Sterling Quinn of the ArcGIS Server development team

Market Potential reports now available in ESRI Business Analyst Online

sasbab — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:32:00 GMT

by Brenda Wolfe

Market Potential reports are here! Come and get 'em!

The Market Potential reports provide measures of the probable demand for a product or service in a defined geographic area.

The following Market Potential reports are now available in Business Analyst Online:

Electronic and Internet Market Potential
Financial Investments Market Potential
Health and Beauty Market Potential
Pets and Products Market Potential
Restaurant Market Potential
Retail Market Potential
Sports and Leisure Market Potential

Based on survey data and updated annually, these reports include the expected number of consumers and a Market Potential Index (MPI) that measures the likelihood that households in a specified area will exhibit certain consumer behaviors compared to the U.S. national average.

There are some really fascinating and detailed variables in the reports, such as the estimated number of adults who ate at Quiznos or the Cheesecake Factory in the last six months.

With these reports you can...

Analyze markets by product type, brand, and purchase patterns to determine if your product would be profitable in the area.
Consider changes and expansions to your product mix based on consumer product demand in the area.
Study competitive products penetration by brand, price, and options, and devise marketing campaigns based on the findings.

To see samples click here. Reports are available for $75 each or in your choice of add-on report packages in Business Analyst Online.

Cheers!

Halloween Facts from ESRI

cmpalermo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:50:00 GMT

by Catherine Spisszak

Halloween is here and I thought you might find these facts using ESRI Data interesting:

Bone Gap Village, IL has a total population of 262. 25.0% of the residents are under 18 and of trick or treating age.
17.4% of the population in Tombstone City, AZ can trick or treat this year as they are younger than 18.
Bates City, MO has an index of 72 for purchasing a horror video/DVD in the last month, 28% lower than the national demand.
The index in Jasonville city, IN for buying a horror video/DVD in the last month is 201, 101% higher than the national demand.
Deadwood city, SD has an index of 93 for buying prepackaged, loose candy in the last 6 months, 7% lower than the national demand.
The index in Pumpkin Center, NC index for buying prepackaged, loose candy in the last 6 months is 104, 4% higher than the national demand.

For more information on ESRI Data please visit http://www.esri.com/data/esri_data/index.html.

Happy Halloween!!

Google Chart Images, VBA, and the ESRI Map Web Part

rexhansen — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:08:00 GMT

Microsoft SharePoint lets you display hyperlink fields in a list as images, so the same batch URL generation technique I discussed in a previous post can be used if you have a set of hosted images that correspond to the items in a list, provided that those images have a standard URL format. And because the Map Web Part fully supports hyperlink fields that are formatted as images, these images will be shown right in each feature's pop-up.

One popular source for images that relate to a set of data is Google Charts. Through the Google Charts REST API, you can pass a URL that specifies your data and some formatting information and receive a chart image in return. Since the URLs are data-driven and must be specified in a standardized format, they are a natural candidate for batch URL generation. So first, write an Excel formula to generate a Google chart based on your data. In the sample workbook, you can use the following:

=CONCATENATE("http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=425x175&cht=p3&chco=FFFFFF,
FEFF01,03FF11,028088,80FF09,0201FF,810181,4101C0,FF0003,C00042,FEAA02,
FF5502&chl=Jan: $",CONCATENATE(G2, "|Feb: $", H2, "|Mar: $", I2, "|Apr: $",
J2, "|May: $", K2, "|Jun: $", L2,"|Jul: $", M2, "|Aug: $", N2, "|Sep: $", O2,
"|Oct: $", P2, "|Nov: $", Q2,"|Dec: $", R2),"&chf=bg,s,FFFFFF00&chd=t:",
ROUND(G2/S2 * 100, 0), ",", ROUND(H2/S2 * 100, 0), ",", ROUND(I2/S2 * 100, 0),
",", ROUND(J2/S2 * 100, 0),",",ROUND(K2/S2 * 100, 0),",",ROUND(L2/S2 * 100, 0),
",", ROUND(M2/S2 * 100, 0), ",", ROUND(N2/S2 * 100, 0), ",", 
ROUND(O2/S2 * 100, 0), ",", ROUND(P2/S2 * 100, 0),",", ROUND(Q2/S2 * 100, 0),
",", ROUND(R2/S2 * 100, 0))

This generates a URL that will create a labeled pie chart showing sales for each month. Once you have the formula, follow steps 2-4 above. When you create the hyperlink field in SharePoint, be sure to select the option to format it as a picture.

Now, there is one small issue with the Google Chart URLs. SharePoint only supports URLs up to 255 characters in length, but the Google Chart URLs are much longer than this. Fortunately, there are many free URL shortening services that expose REST APIs, and we can use VBA to call these in batch fashion. In the code behind for the sample workbook, notice the methods shown below. If you are using your own data, you should copy these methods into the code-behind for your workbook.

Private Sub ConvertLinksToShortUrls(sourceColumn As String, targetColumn As String, 
 startRow As Integer, endRow As Integer)
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim sourceCell As String
    Dim targetCell As String
    Dim shortUrl As String
    For i = startRow To endRow
        sourceCell = sourceColumn + CStr(i)
        shortUrl = ShortenURL(Range(sourceCell).Value)
        
        targetCell = targetColumn + CStr(i)
        Call Worksheets(1).Hyperlinks.Add(Range(targetCell), shortUrl)
        DoEvents
    Next i
End Sub

Private Function ShortenURL(longUrl As String)
    'Encode passed-in URL
    Dim encodedUrl As String
    encodedUrl = URLEncode(longUrl, True)
    
    'Construct URL to shortening service
    Dim requestUrl As String
    requestUrl = "http://ur.ly/new.xml?href=" + encodedUrl
    
    'Execute request to URL
    Dim net As Inet
    Set net = New Inet
    Call net.Execute(requestUrl)
    Do While net.StillExecuting
        DoEvents
    Loop
    
    'Get length of response
    Dim contentLength As Long
    contentLength = net.GetHeader("content-length")
    
    'Get response's XML content and escape ampersands
    Dim urlXml As String
    urlXml = net.GetChunk(contentLength)
    urlXml = Replace(urlXml, "&", "&")
    
    'Load response into DOM doc object
    Dim xml As DOMDocument60
    Set xml = New DOMDocument60
    Call xml.LoadXML(urlXml)
        
    'Extract short Url info from xml and construct short url
    Dim shortUrl As String
    shortUrl = "http://ur.ly/" + xml.getElementsByTagName("urly")
      (0).Attributes.NextNode.NodeValue
    
    ShortenURL = shortUrl
End Function

Public Function URLEncode( _
   StringToEncode As String, _
   Optional UsePlusRatherThanHexForSpace As Boolean = False _
) As String

  Dim TempAns As String
  Dim CurChr As Integer
  CurChr = 1

  Do Until CurChr - 1 = Len(StringToEncode)
    Select Case Asc(Mid(StringToEncode, CurChr, 1))
      Case 46 To 57, 65 To 90, 97 To 122
        TempAns = TempAns & Mid(StringToEncode, CurChr, 1)
      Case 32
        If UsePlusRatherThanHexForSpace = True Then
          TempAns = TempAns & "+"
        Else
          TempAns = TempAns & "%" & Hex(32)
        End If
      Case Else
        TempAns = TempAns & "%" & Hex(Asc(Mid(StringToEncode, CurChr, 1)))
    End Select

    CurChr = CurChr + 1
  Loop

  URLEncode = TempAns
End Function

The key here is the ConvertLinksToShortURLs method. All you need to do to convert links in one range of cells to short URLs and copy them as hyperlinks to another range is call this method. For the sample uncomment the call to this method and comment the call to CopyHyperlinks so that the AddUrlsToTable method appears as:

Private Sub AddUrlsToTable()
    'Call CopyHyperlinks("V", "T", 2, 79)
    Call ConvertLinksToShortUrls("W", "U", 2, 79)
    MsgBox "Operation Complete"
End Sub

Run this method to generate the shortened Google Chart URLs and synchronize the list with SharePoint. Then load the list in your Map Web Part, hover over a feature, and see the chart show up in the pop-up:

Rich Zwaap
ESRI Product Engineer
ArcGIS Server .NET, Silverlight/WPF, MapIt