Tag Archives: Engine
Planning your DevSummit: Desktop
The Planning your DevSummit series is aimed at helping you make the most of your time at the 2010 Developer Summit. We’re really excited by the technical sessions, user presentations, demo theaters and seminars we’ve got lined up for you and there is certainly a lot to take in. Hopefully we can help make planning your days at the DevSummit that little bit easier.
The Technical Sessions
Desktop and Engine developers have a lot to look forward to with the release of ArcGIS 10, and there are plenty of sessions that cover the new functionality. This post covers those sessions to help you decide which ones to attend. There’s also a Presummit Seminar about Python that’s worth checking out.
Day 0: Presummit Seminar
Python plays a greater role at ArcGIS 10, with new and extended functionality. Getting Started with Python in ArcGIS (8:30am) introduces the basics and takes you through to creating your own tools, highlighting the new features at ArcGIS 10.
Day 1
Developing .NET Applications for ArcGIS Engine (1:00pm) explores new features of Engine development at ArcGIS 10, covering a number of new components and touching on licensing. Some ArcObjects and .NET experience is required.
New at ArcGIS 10, Desktop Add-ins will be of great interest to anyone who’s had to deploy customizations to ArcMap. The Introduction to ArcGIS Desktop Add-ins (2:45pm) session discusses the add-in programming model and framework, coding patterns, distribution and debugging and is a must-see if you’re extending ArcMap.
Day 2
For Java developers, ArcGIS 10 also introduces Java Add-ins and Extending ArcGIS Desktop and Engine with Java (10:30am) uses real-world examples to show you how to create custom feature renderers and geoprocessing tools in addition to Desktop Add-ins.
Enhancing Your Applications with ArcGIS Online (1:00pm) is not strictly on the Desktop track, but covers consuming ArcGIS Online services and content, showing how they can be used in ArcGIS applications. Useful if you want to learn more about how to make good use of ArcGIS Online in your applications.
Once you’ve written great Desktop and Engine applications, you still need to have a system to deploy and manage them. Deploying Desktop and Engine Applications in .NET (2:45pm) will go into detail on best practices for deployment and distribution of Desktop and Engine applications, licensing, version compatibility, service packs and building setup programs. This session requires some experience with .NET and ArcObjects.
Again not strictly Desktop track sessions but nonetheless of potential interest to Desktop developers:
- Creating, Managing, and Utilizing a 3D Virtual City in ArcGIS 10 (4:30pm)
- Redesigning Desktop Applications for the Web (4:30pm)
Both promise to be interesting, and if you’re thinking of making the switch to Web-based applications using one of our Web APIs then Redesigning Desktop Applications for the Web (4:30pm) will probably make most sense.
Day 3
If you’re interested in learning more about extending ArcGIS Explorer (which has its own SDK), Implementing ArcGIS Explorer (8:30am) is worth attending. If you’re mostly visualizing data, ArcGIS Explorer may provide all the functionality you need.
At the same time is Developer-to-Developer: The ESRI Development Process (8:30am) which will be useful and of interest to any developer.
A three-part session Developer-to-Developer: ArcGIS 10 Desktop Development Topics (10:15am) goes over 3 important aspects of enhancement introduced at ArcGIS 10: Display Performance, Geocoding, and migrating VBA/VB6 applications to .NET (ArcGIS 10 is the last release to support VBA and VB6).
Previous desktop sessions (Developing .NET Applications for ArcGIS Engine on Day 1 at 1:00pm and Developing .NET Applications for ArcGIS Engine Day 2 at 1:00pm) will have discussed Desktop and Engine specific licensing topics, but ESRI Product Licensing (10:15am) is a Q&A oriented panel discussion so if you have specific questions left this is your chance to put them to our team.
More Details
You can download the complete Desktop sessions overview as a PDF document to print out and bring with you to the DevSummit as a convenient reference.
In the run-up to the DevSummit we’ll be posting more of these guides to help you pick out the sessions you’ll likely want to attend, and we’ll also be discussing the User Presentations. These are the guides you can look forward to:
- ArcGIS Server: Web APIs (Overview PDF)
- ArcGIS Server: GIS Services (Overview PDF)
- ArcGIS Server: Administration (Overview PDF)
- ArcGIS Desktop (Overview PDF)
- ArcGIS Mobile (Overview PDF)
- ArcGIS Geodatabase (Overview PDF)
- ArcGIS Geoprocessing (Overview PDF)
If you’ve got suggestions for what you’d like to see in these guides, let us know.
- Nick
Accessing ArcGIS Java Help System Content From within Eclipse Developer IDE for Windows Developers
The Help System in the Eclipse Developer IDE is designed like the rest of the environment and is built with a plug-in architecture. Packaging the Java Help System as a Developer IDE Plug-in can significantly increase memory size requirements and cause the development environment to hang on install. This article discusses taking advantage of the Java Help System InfoCenter as a stand-alone Help System to be integrated into your Eclipse Developer Environment. This can be done in 3 easy steps.
Step 1: To get started, you must first ensure that you have installed the ArcGIS SDK Java Help System. This is a separate installer from ArcGIS Engine and/or ArcGIS Server for Java. Once successfully installed, the help system runs in single user mode as stand-alone help system for the Java developers. To set up the Java Help System in InfoCenter mode you simply execute the Java Help Server scripts located at ‘%ARCGISHOME%java docs’. To start the Help System in InfoCenter mode, execute the ‘startJavaHelpServer.bat’ file:
%ARCGISHOME%javadocsstartJavaHelpServer.bat [<port>]
The default port the Java Help System InfoCenter will run on if you do not set the port when you execute the script will be ‘2112’. Clients can now access the Java Help System from any machine inside your network by pointing your web browser to the following url:
%ServerName%:2112helpindex.jsp
Step 2: Now that you have successfully started the Java Help System in InfoCenter mode, you can easily integrate the Help System into your Eclipse Developer IDE.
Make sure you have the latest supported Eclipse developer IDE, version 3.3.x, and open the Preferences dialog by selecting ‘Window->Preferences’ from the tools menu. In the Preference dialog, navigate to ‘Help->Content’ as shown in an illustration to the right.
Step 3: The Eclipse Help System needs to know the address (host/IP) and port of the remote server to integrate with the local system. Select the ‘Include help content form a remote infocenter‘ checkbox and provide the following server information:
- Host: Put a valid Server Name or IP Address where the remote infocenter is located. In our example the server name is ‘javabuild’.
- Path: ‘/help’.
- Select the ‘Use Port’ radio box and put ’2112′ in the port text box. The dialog should resemble the image below with your server name replacing ‘javabuild’.
Click ‘OK’ to close the Preference dialog and open up the Eclipse Help System, ‘Help->Help Contents’, to see the ArcGIS Java Developer Help System integrated into your local Eclipse Help System.
The Java Help System InfoCenter is a stand-alone server and doesn’t require an additional Web Server. However, in a production environment, you may want to control important issues that are best handled by a Web Server. For example, you may want to redirect requests by setting up a proxy module in Apache. This is all possible for more advanced users of the java Help System InfoCenter.
ArcGIS Engine now supported on 32 bit RedHat Enterprise Linux 5
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We’re happy to announce that ArcGIS Engine 9.3 as of Service Pack 1 is now officially supported on 32 bit RedHat Enterprise Linux 5! ArcGIS Engine has been supported on SUSE Enterprise Linux 10, Solaris 9, Solaris 10, RedHat Enterprise Linux 4, and of course Windows. Please feel free to check out the knowledge base article for steps on installing and upgrading ArcGIS Engine on this new platform. |
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ArcGIS Engine Java: Building a Multitemporal SDSS scenario viewer
The Summer 2008 edition of ArcUser magazine includes an interesting article on Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) developed for the GLOWA IMPETUS research program that provides an integrated approach to the efficient management of scarce water resources in West Africa. Using ArcGIS Engine Java, comprehensive ArcGIS functionalities and partly remote sensing analysis are incorporated in the SDSS. Specifically, the SDSS includes a GIS tool for visualization called the ArcGISDoubleMapPanel, which allows users to evaluate two multitemporal layers in one panel. This kind of functionality is not yet available in most GIS software and SDSSs.
The ArcGISDoubleMapPanel
The ArcGISDoubleMapPanel tool provides thematic and non-thematic raster and vector maps that can contain either two attributes and one time slider or one attribute and two time sliders (to compare two different time frames). Figures 1 and 2 contain screen shots of the ArcGISDoubleMapPanel tool during preliminary development of the SDSS. Two PageLayoutBeans, which have toolbars with common GIS tools and time sliders (for visualizing multitemporal time steps), are used. By displaying two feature layers with different attributes that are thematically mapped, the user can intuitively compare these attributes. A Java slider (JSlider) component, located below the two maps, allows the user to view changes in the scenario over time. This slider has access to multitemporal feature layers and provides different time increments. Using a processor that accesses the specific time step of the layer, the two maps of the ArcGISDoubleMapPanel are updated (using refresh) during run time. Based on the classification applied to the map, layers change color in response to movement of the time slider. In Figure 2, the ArcGISDoubleMapPanel displays feature data classified by one attribute. The user visually compares two maps from different time spans. This provides an easy way to detect change over time. Each PageLayoutBean has its own time slider.
Above: Screen shots showing the ArcGISDoubleMapPanel with two attributes (in this case two vector layers) and one time slider.
Above: Screen shots showing the ArcGISDoubleMapPanel displaying one attribute (population density) and two time sliders.
In addition to simultaneous visualization of multiple scenarios, the ArcGISDoubleMapPanel tool is also useful for performing change detection analyses, assessing current conditions and predicting future situations. To learn more about the SDSS, its architecture and implementation read the ArcUser article: Visualization, Interpretation and Evaluation.
Contributed by the ArcGIS Engine Java Product Team.
Context menus made easy: in Java
As many of us might agree, context menus are a great way to place functions where users would intuitively expect them to be. Right-click on a layer (provided your mouse has a right button) and capabilities specific to that layer should pop-up. Right-click somewhere else, and the options hovering under the mouse change to something else. This is a proven approach for helping your users do what they want to do more efficiently. Java developers who are using the ArcGIS Engine development kit are not provided the ability to create context menus right out of the box.
Steven Rozic and Lalitha Darbhamulla from ESRI recently uploaded a Code Gallery sample that we all hope you will find helpful. It’s called “Creating a Context Menu for Layers“, although the source code could be applied in other contexts as well. An extra bonus: the download includes two options to choose from. One uses the ArcGIS ToolbarMenu and the other uses the JpopupMenu from the Java Swing package.
Podcast: Introduction to ArcGIS Engine Development
The ESRI Instructional Series has a new podcast out there called “Introduction to ArcGIS Engine Development“. It is about eight minutes long and it provides an introduction to ArcGIS Engine and how it can be used to develop standalone applications and extend existing ones. Described in the podcast are the SDK itself, customization options, licensing, ArcObjects model, and the application framework.
So, whether or not you have programmed using ArcObjects in the ArcGIS Desktop VBA editing environment, this podcast provides a good overview of the ArcGIS Engine development toolkit. For more information, a great way to get started is at the ArcGIS Engine Resource Center.
Technical Workshop: Building Solutions with ArcGIS Engine
If you are headed to San Diego to attend the 2008 ESRI International User Conference next week, we look forward to seeing you there. Feel free to stop by the EDN and ArcGIS Engine product islands and meet the teams.
And if you have been using ArcGIS Engine or just getting started, consider attending the valuable “Building Solutions” technical workshop for ArcGIS Engine. Actually there will be two workshops, one for Java developers and one for .NET.
For JAVA developers: Tuesday, August 5th, 3:15-4:30pm, in Room 15A
For .NET developers: Tuesday, August 5th, 1:30-2:45pm, in Room 15A (offered again on Thursday, same time/room)
Eclipse Update Manager hangs when installing the ArcGIS Doc plug-in at 9.3.
The Eclipse Update Manager hangs when installing the ArcGIS Doc plug-in for Engine or Server on some machines. The following workaround will help you get the plug-in up and running.
Step 1: Unzip com.esri.arcgis.doc_9.3.0.1770.jar located in the <ArcGIS Install>/java/tools/eclipse_plugin/arcgis_update_site/doc/plugins/ folder to <Eclipse Install folder>/pluginsStep 2: Restart Eclipse using the –clean command line argument to eclipse.exe to update the Eclipse configuration.
Additional information about the Eclipse plug-ins for ArcGIS can be found on the EDN site:
