ArcGIS Explorer Blog : geoprocessing

Creating add-ins that execute geoprocessing services

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:05:00 GMT

Using the ArcGIS Explorer SDK you can create add-ins using Visual Studio that connect to and execute geoprocessing services. With SDK capabilities such as TrackPoint, TrackLine, and TrackPolygon, users can create geometries on the map which can be packaged with other parameters as inputs to the geoprocessing service. When the service has finished, outputs from the service can be displayed on the map, used in popups, and more depending on what is appropriate for the type of information returned.

The drive time analysis sample included in the SDK Help shows a working example of a DockWindow add-in being used to call a geoprocessing service and add the results to the map. Here’s an outline of the steps using the drive time analysis sample to illustrate some specific points.

First, make sure you have a supported development environment and the ArcGIS Explorer SDK installed. The SDK can be obtained from the ArcGIS Explorer download page and you can download and install Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions for free.

Next, use the ArcGIS Explorer DockWindow project templates to create an add-in with a dockable window.

If you've not created an add-in before, you can review a recent blog post that covers the basics and also view a full walk-through on creating a custom Dock Window in the SDK Help.

In Visual Studio add a web reference to the project and enter the URL of the SOAP endpoint of the geoprocessing service that you want to work against.

This will create an API to connect to the geoprocessing service and program against it. If you have not programmed against a SOAP API before, refer to the Using SOAP to access ArcGIS Server Web Services Help topic for an introduction.

The information you need to pass in and receive back from the service will depend on the geoprocessing service that you are working with. If the service has input parameters, work out if this will be determined automatically by the add-in or if it will be chosen by the ArcGIS Explorer use scenario, and then think how you will gather this information from the user.

Also look at the output of the service and work out how you want to display this information in ArcGIS Explorer. For example, the Drive Time Analysis sample lets the user to click on the map using the MapDisplay.TrackPoint method and the resulting Point object is used to pass starting coordinates to the GP service. Here are some more tips on dealing with some of the different geoprocessing service types:

The GPBoolean, GPDate, GPDouble, GPLinearUnit, GPLong, GPString types can be mapped to equivalent .NET value types such as Boolean, DateTime, Double and so on - for example if these types are input to the service, add a NumericUpDown control to the DockWindow to allow the user to determine a numeric value.
From the GPFeatureRecordSetLayer type you can access attributes and shapes of a recordset of results. The shape from the recordset can be converted to an ArcGIS Explorer Geometry and added to the Map as a Graphic or Note. The attributes from the recordset can be formatted into content for a Note popup, or shown in a form or on the DockWindow; a similar approach can be taken with the attribute data represented by a GPRecordSet.
Services returning URLs to other documents or images can be incorporated into the content of the popup of an ArcGIS Explorer note or view. An example was shown during the User Conference plenary session.

Finally, program against the service to pass in information and display the result in Explorer using the input and output types you worked out in the previous step. Consider using a BackgroundWorker if the call to the service may take a while and your intended workflow means that the user can continue working while the call to the service is made. If the user must wait for the result, consider using a ProgressHelper to inform the user of progress, as shown in the Drive Time Analysis sample.

BPC and Dev Summit - Some Custom Tasks

bszukalski — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:16:00 GMT

Last week was a busy week for the entire Explorer team, with lots of interesting things happening and lots of great discussions in the Showcase area and elsewhere at Palm Springs. We appreciate all of your comments and feedback. We'll be highlighting some of the presentations and those discussions in a series of posts beginning this week.

First, here's a few things that were shown during the ESRI Business Partner Conference and Developer Summit plenaries. We've covered some of the general things that we typically demonstrate in previous posts on the ESRI Federal User Conference, Petroleum User Group meeting, and GITA, so we'll focus on some of the different things that were shown last week.

One of the custom tasks demonstrated is one you'll find on the Explorer Resource Center. Just choose File > Resource Center and choose the Tasks tab.

The one we chose is the Weather Finder task authored by Michael Waltuch, one of the lead designers on the ArcGIS Explorer development team. Just click to open the NMF file, which will add the task to your current session. To learn more about this task click the Description link on the Resource Center entry, or choose About Weather Finder on the task UI. You'll learn the following:

Weather Finder locates the nearest weather station to a specified location and reports its most recent weather observations. The task is based on a reverse geocoding web service located at GeoNames.org. To learn more about GeoNames go to their web site and see the service description.

The popup window associated with the weather station includes a link to the National Weather Service's Telecommunication Operations Center which lists more information and a 24 hour summary for the weather station.

This is a good example of a custom task which has been written using the ArcGIS Explorer SDK to work against an existing Web service - In other words it's a mashup.

Using one of the Portland bookmarks, we right-clicked the pushpin to use the Send To capability to use this location as the starting point for the Weather Finder task. The bookmark itself is the result of a task (the Create Notes task in this case), and when you take the result of one task and send it to another we refer to that as task chaining, and you can read more about that in the Help.

Here's the result of the Weather Finder task, the closest weather station to our Portland bookmark. In this case it's located at the airport. If we click the result pushpin you'll see the latest weather information in the popup, including links to the NOAA site providing more detailed information and historic data for this location.

We also used a task we obtained from the Showcase area on the Explorer Resource Center. The showcase is a place where anyone can contribute tasks, results, or other items they want to share with the Explorer community. We chose the Flickr Task authored by Rob Dunfey, a member of the ArcGIS Explorer SDK team who also authored a blog post with more details about the custom task. This task is another good example of a mashup with other existing Web-based APIs, in this case it uses the Fickr API.

Here we typed in "portland" to return the first 20 Flickr photos tagged with that keyword. Each of the results can be clicked to open a popup displaying the photo.

Another task that was shown was a custom geoprocessing task, authored using the Model Builder in ArcGIS Desktop and published using ArcGIS Server. The task's UI was automatically generated by ArcGIS Server, based on parameters specified by the task author. The ArcGIS Explorer SDK can be used to modify its UI, but we just used the default, automatically generated one.

Here we've used Send To again to use our Portland bookmark as the input location for a 1 and 3 minute drive time analysis.

In upcoming posts we'll cover more of what was shown, including some of the technical details of the plenary and workshop presentations, and also cover some of the things we showed that are coming in future releases.

Explorer at GITA

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:56:00 GMT

Over the last couple of posts we've covered ArcGIS Explorer at the Petroleum User Group (PUG) Conference and also the Federal User Conference (FedUC). We're now at GITA, and here's a quick recap of what was presented at last night's ESRI dinner reception, and what will be hightlighted in the ESRI booth on the showroom floor.

Once again Explorer's ability to add a variety of internet content and local data sources was highlighted. For many users this is essential, as many already publish services using ArcIMS and ArcGIS Server, and have wide variety of local data that must be integrated.

The City of Riverside is shown below with a 3D model of a substation. The substation is part of a citywide 3D landscape that was authored in ArcGlobe and published as an ArcGIS Server globe service. Also shown is part of the street scene, showing some of the 3D objects (trees, cars, poles) from the ArcGlobe 3D library, as well as several buildings designed using Sketchup.

Utility assets such as hydrants, poles, pipes, valves, and others can be linked to files like geo-tagged photos shown below. These linked and integrated documents can includes videos, diagrams, work orders, and other files.

A geoprocessing tool was authored that performs network tracing on the electrical network based on a trouble call location, identifying upstream and downstream infrastructure and devices that may be affected.