Monthly Archives: August 2009
ESRI StreetMap Premium with Tele Atlas is AVAILABLE !
by Christophe Charpentier
Earlier this year we released ESRI StreetMap Premium for North America and Europe using NAVTEQ data, and until this week it has been the only version available from ESRI.
Well, as of this week, ESRI StreetMap Premium for North America is now also available from TeleAtlas!
Graphics of the Media Kit for North America – unfolded
The same Media Kit folded
Like all other existing versions of ESMP, ESRI StreetMap Premium with Tele Atlas data can be licensed by function (map display, geocoding, routing, or any combination of these) and by geography (region, country, or state/province).
Once you receive your Media Kit, you will also receive an email from our customer service group with a data license attachment similar to this one:
Once you’ve copied ESMP on your machine, double click on this 15kb file…
…and you’re good to go.
Those of you anxiously awaiting the Tele Atlas versions of ESRI StreetMap Premium will be happy to know it was worth the wait! In response to feedback we received on the earlier releases, we’ve made some significant technical improvements (which will also be incorporated in the next NAVTEQ releases).
The 2 major improvements being :
1. A new locator style, that will provide you with much better geocoding performance (quality and speed).
2. A street carto layer, that allows 5 times faster display in ArcMap.
For a quick overview of all the cool features of ESRI StreetMap Premium check out this podcast.
Next up will be the release of the European version of ESRI StreetMap Premium with Tele Atlas data. It should be only a matter of days now, so stay tuned…
ArcGIS Online Sharing application–8/28/09 update
8/28/09–Today, we updated the ArcGIS Online Sharing application. We’ve fixed some bugs, sped up performance, and improved the editing experience for groups you own.
Look for our next update in about two weeks.
Have suggestions for improving the application? Let us know through the ArcGIS Online forums.
ArcGIS Explorer Community resources
Whether you’re learning the basics of the latest release or looking to create your own add-in using the SDK, the ArcGIS Explorer Community offers a wide variety of useful information. These include this blog, the Explorer Gallery, a Media Gallery, peer-to-peer discussion and help forums, and the Knowledge Base.
Just go to the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center and click Community.
Geocoding tips for ZIP+4 data
by Kyle Watson
Good mornin’
Let’s have a quick chat about the geocoding in ESRI Business Analyst – and how to increase the accuracy. Business Analyst, as you may know, bundles street data and locators that allow you to “put dots on the map”. Those dots are usually your stores, customers, competitors etc. – any file with address information.
Here’s how the standard composite locators try to find addresses:
(1) Address Point …highest level of accuracy, but not available in all areas so then it finds…
(2) Street Address …if it can’t find the address then…
(3) ZIP Code …maybe the address is misspelled, or if no ZIP is found then it drops to…
(4) City/State …you may want to revisit these original records and re-geocode…
But there’s one more option, have you ever used the Business Analyst ZIP+4 locator and data? It adds an extra level of thoroughness while finding street addresses. Here’s an example of why you would want to use it.
The image below shows a customer file geocoded in the 07410 ZIP Code (Fair Lawn, NJ). I tried geocoding the 11 addresses and for whatever reason the street addresses weren’t found so the default locator at least assigned them to their ZIP Code, (represented by the red triangle in the middle). The triangle location is just the ZIP Code center, not their real postal address. So the problem here is I now have 11 records in one location and you miss out on your customer distribution patterns.
I then used the ZIP+4 locator to geocode the same file. The results (black dots) give a much better representation of the customer locations. Their ZIP+4 extensions (ex: 07410-1590) add another level of geographic granularity within the overall boundary.
So how do I use it? Easy, just modify your install options to include it. Pop in your install DVD, go to your Add/Remove Programs and find Business Analyst. Hit the Change or Add/Remove buttons. Select the ZIP+4 Geocoding Data. The data (2.5GB) and locator are added.
Then you just need to activate the locator in Business Analyst. Go to your Business Analyst Preferences > Dataset tab and select the new ZIP+4 locator. If your data has ZIP+4 records, you’ll see a new entry for ZIP+4 entry in the Store and Customer Setup dialogs.
Hope you found this helpful. (many thanks to Dennis Kaplan for this blog idea…)
Kyle
ESRI Data featured in Crain's New York City Facts
by Catherine Spisszak
Esri Data is showcased in a recent edition of Crain’s New York City Facts.
This online article provides very interesting facts about New York City, including which neighborhoods are expected to grow the fastest over the next five years due to good schools, rehabbed housing and new shopping.
Click here to check out the entire article: crainsnewyork.com
Searching for items by date published
8/25/09–All items published to ArcGIS Online contain information on when they were published. You can use this information in your searches to find items published during a given time frame.
The date and time an item is published is not stored in a form that is easily read by people. Instead, ArcGIS Online uses UNIX time (also UNIX epoch and POSIX time) as its reference system. UNIX time is defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since midnight January 1, 1970. So in order to create a search expression that incorporates time, you need to convert time as we typically refer to it (e.g., August 6, 2009 08:40 AM) into UNIX time. Here’s a useful web site that does just that: http://www.epochconverter.com/.
Suppose you want to find all public items published between August 1, 2009, 12:00AM to today (August 6, 2009 08:40AM). First you’d need to convert both of these dates into UNIX time.
August 1, 2009 12:00AM converts to: 1249084800
August 6, 2009 08:40AM converts to: 1249548000
ArcGIS Online actually stores time in milliseconds, so you need to add three zeros to the end of the numbers above. Additionally, you need to pad six zeros on the front of the number. This is because the number is stored as a string in the database.
To form the search expression that you can enter into the search box of ArcGIS Online, you specify you want to search the uploaded field. This is the field that stores the date and time an item is uploaded. Thus, the expression would look like this:
uploaded: [0000001249084800000 TO 0000001249548000000]
Note that the operator TO needs to be in uppercase.
In my case, ArcGIS Online returned a few items dated July 31, 2009. Initially, I was a bit confused by this, but then I realized that time zone differences come in to play. August 1, 2009 12:00AM (UTC – Coordinated Universal Time) is actually July 31, 2009 04:00PM (UTC-8 – Pacific Time).
You can combine the uploaded field with other search parameters. For example:
- earthquakes uploaded: [0000001249084800000 TO 0000001249548000000] – would find items that contain the word earthquakes published in the time frame.
- owner:esri uploaded: [0000001249084800000 TO 0000001249548000000] – would find items owned by ESRI published in the time frame. (NOTE: There are no published items during this time frame from ESRI.)
For additional information on other searchable fields, see http://www.arcgisonline.com/help/content/search/advanced_search.htm
Contributed by Mike Minami of the ArcGIS Online development team
Welcome to the ArcGIS Data Blog
Because content is such a crucial component of your GIS projects, and because ESRI is working to make more content available to you, we decided it’s about time we launch a blog about all things ArcGIS Data.
The ArcGIS Content team builds the data components you find in the box with ArcGIS products, such as ESRI Data & Maps, and also the street data you find in ArcLogistics and the Business Analyst suite, all the maps and tasks in ArcGIS Online, the maps for MapIt, and basically any other GIS data in ESRI products.
ESRI Data & Maps
Since we complete or release a new data product almost every week, we thought it would be a good idea to open up this direct line of communication with you. We will keep you posted on the latest and greatest data news and give you a heads-up on what we have in the works.
So stay tuned…
On behalf of the ArcGIS Content Team, welcome to the new ArcGIS Data Blog.
Print Task templates with the 9.3.1 .NET Web ADF
The 9.3.1 ArcGIS Server Web ADF for .NET introduces an extensibility point to the Print Task that allows you to customize the look of your printouts using template files on the Web server.
A new property called LayoutTemplateFile is introduced to define the template file. This property can point to any file on disk but must be accessible via a web URL. The file may be part of the same application or can reside in a separate application (for example, the aspnet_client folder).
In Visual Studio, select the PrintTask control and you’ll see the new property. Clicking the Browse button allows you to browse to the custom template file.
How do you create a simple custom template?
An easy way to create a template is to modify the ADF’s default template.
- Within Visual Studio, right-click your project and choose “Add New Item…” from the menu. When the dialog appears, choose “HTML Page” and give it a suitable name. This will create an HTML document which you can use as the template.
- Open the default template file which is typically installed in the ADF runtime folder (Example: C:Inetpubwwwrootaspnet_clientESRIWebADFPrintTaskLayoutTemplatesdefault.htm). This file defines the default appearance and layout of the Print Task output window.
- Overwrite the markup of the new page with the contents from default.htm.
- Modify the markup and CSS to obtain the output you desire.
What can you do with these custom templates?
Using custom templates, you can:
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Control the layout of elements and their styles
In the template file, you can define the position and dimensions of the different elements on the page such as the map title, map image, and legend information. You can style the template page using inline CSS or an externally linked style sheet.
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Inject dynamic content
The template file is not restricted to static HTML files but can reference resources which generate dynamic content (such as .aspx files or .ashx files). For example, the current time stamp could be included in the print output using a dynamic page.
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Control the display of results
You can control the styling of task results through CSS and you may also choose to render the result entirely, forgoing the default generated table view. If you want to get more advanced, you might add an image generated using the Google Chart API or a report section rendered using a browser plugin like Silverlight.
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Use JavaScript hooks
In addition to providing extensibility with respect to layout and rendering, the Print Task also exposes JavaScript events which can be used to completely control and customize the output. This is achieved by having “callback functions” defined in the template file which are invoked at specific stages of the output rendering.
Further reading
The SDK sample Common Print Task demonstrates the above capabilities where a chart is drawn dynamically using the Google Chart API
Contributed by Nikhil Shampur of the ArcGIS Server .NET software development team.
Controlling the drawing order of your map contents
When you add data, create notes, find places, add views, etc., you create items which appear in your contents. You can organize these any way that you like. By default, items are added to the top of the contents window, but you can drag them to a different location. You can also organize items into folders by theme or activity. Here we’ve added a wide variety of items and organized them into folders and sub-folders by theme.
The order of items in your contents is not always the same as the drawing order. While this may seem puzzling at first, it enables you to organize your items in ways that make sense. This organization may be quite different than the order in which you want the items to draw.
To change the drawing order of items, open the Manage Layers dialog which you will find on the Home tab in the Map group.
Using Manage Layers you can control the drawing order of your items by highlighting them and clicking Move Up or Move Down. You can also remove items or clear their local cache.
You can also change the drawing order for certain kinds of layers by clicking the Tools tab and choosing the drawing order option (like bring to front or send to back), or clicking the box in the lower right to open Manage Layers. Here we’ve clicked on an ArcGIS Layer in our contents, and clicked the tools tab to show the draw order controls.
You’ll find more information in the Contents Window and Manage Layers Help topics
