ArcGIS 9.3 SP 1 Geodatabase replication system version patch

A new patch for ArcGIS 9.3 is released today. If you are using 1 way or 2 way replicas in ArcGIS 9.3 SP 1 then download this patch.

It is fixing the following issue:

• NIM039250 - Replica system versions are not removed when synchronizing a 1 way or 2 way replica using connected synchronization

Patch can be downloaded from Support Centre. To verify installation of this patch GeoDBReplication.dll will have version number 9.3.1.1853

How to build supercomputer from PS3 consols?

Once you get bored playing games on Playstation 3 you can get few more and build yourself a supercomputer cluster. If you don't know how to do this don't despair. Advanced Technology & Manufacturing Center from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has just the thing you need - detailed instructions how to set up your cluster.

The process is relatively simple:

1. Install Linux (in this case Fedora 8)
2. Set up Message Passing Interface and Cell SDK
3. Start number crunching

Of course I have left out all details from steps 1 and 2 but this should not be very difficult.
The resources page may be visited quite often especially if you are not familiar with Cell chip and graphics side of PS3.

Comment from a Professor Gaurav Khanna from UMASS about PS3:

For the same cost, you can build your own supercomputer and it works just as well if not better. Plus, you can use it over and over again, indefinitely.

So, don't turn off your PS3 yet!

Interview with Jack Dangermond

At Enterprise Applications web site there is an inverview with Jack Dangermond, founder of ESRI. This is one of rare interviews (relatively short one) and Jack talks about various topics, from philosophy of ESRI as a company to open source.

Quote about Microsoft and Google:

Microsoft and Google, and Yahoo to a large extent, are very much consumer-focused. They look at mapping and geospatial visualisation as one more aspect of search. It’s all about spatial search as an augmentation to traditional web search. This is a very exiting field; it concentrates on a global base map for visualisation and association.


 
They both become active in being able to support embeddable mapping for locator services and they are both spending between $100m - $150m, a year on developing content for that base map. The technology itself is highly optimised for fast visualisation access; it’s not a GIS system.

ESRI TV updates

ESRI TV channel on YouTube has a number of new videos added. They are all for current release, 9.3. Videos cover a range of topics from analysis, mapping and data management up to ArcGIS Explorer.

Here is a complete list of newly added videos.

• ArcGIS 9.3: Advanced planning and analysis - Part 2
• ArcGIS 9.3: Easier dissemination of spatial information using ArcGIS Explorer - Part 2
• ArcGIS 9.3: Easier dissemination of spatial information using ArcGIS Explorer - Part 1
• ArcGIS 9.3: Advanced planning and analysis - Part 1
• ArcGIS 9.3: Productivity enhancements at 9.3 - Part 2
• ArcGIS 9.3: Productivity enhancements at 9.3 - Part 1ArcGIS 9.3: Create Web mapping applications using Web APIs
• ArcGIS 9.3: Create Web mapping applications using ArcGIS Server Manager
• ArcGIS 9.3: Improve mobility using ArcGIS Mobile
• ArcGIS 9.3: See an example of how an Insurance Claims Manager uses ArcGIS and a mobile solution
• ArcGIS 9.3 Data Mgmt Part 4: Data Replication
• ArcGIS 9.3 Data Mgmt Part 3: Experienced desktop user employing ArcEditor in a PWDPWD
• ArcGIS 9.3 Data Mgmt Part 2: Experienced desktop user employing ArcEditor in a Planning Department
• ArcGIS 9.3 Data Mgmt Part 1: Create, update, and manage asset information using ArcGIS Desktop
• ArcGIS 9.3: Cartographic enhancements at 9.3
• ArcGIS 9.3: Creating high-quality maps using ArcInfo
• ArcGIS 9.3: Disseminate Information Throughout The Web Using ArcGIS Server
• ArcGIS 9.3: Disseminate Information To The Field Using ArcGIS Mobile
• ArcGIS 9.3: The Complete GIS for the Enterprise
• Reporting Tools with ArcGIS Business Analyst

Videos vary in length from 3 to 10 minutes and are good way to see what is new. Of course this will show you just a tip of an iceberg...

Making globes

Since I was a kid I wondered how do they make globes. If you want to find out here is a 5 minutes long video that shows you the whole process.


Enjoy!

OpenCL 1.0 specification released

I wrote a few posts about CUDA and utilizing power of the graphic cards for other types of calculations mainly for physics calculations. Nvidia is one of the major contributors for OpenCL (Open Computing Language) but not the only one. Working group includes Apple, AMD, ARM, Broadcom, IBM, Ericsson, Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Activision, Blizzard and others. Obviously both hardware and software companies are interested in development of OpenCL.
Khronos group has released 1.0 specification on it’s site as PDF file and header files. PDF is a big 302 pages document and will be required reading for all keen developers.
What is OpenCL? From their definition it is:

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is the first open, royalty-free standard for general-purpose parallel programming of heterogeneous systems. OpenCL provides a uniform programming environment for software developers to write efficient, portable code for high-performance compute servers, desktop computer systems and handheld devices using a diverse mix of multi-core CPUs, GPUs, Cell-type architectures and other parallel processors such as DSPs.

OpenCL is created with several goals in mind. These include having open, royalty free standard for heterogeneous parallel computing, cross vendor software portability, creating foundation layer for parallel computing ecosystem.

Anatomy of OpenCL


Language Specification

• C-based cross-platform programming interlace
• Subset of ISO C99 with language extensions - familiar to developers
• Well-defined numerical accuracy - IEEE 754 rounding behavior with defined maximum error 
• Online or offline compilation and build of compute kernel executables 
  Includes a rich set of built-in functions
  

Platform Layer API

• A hardware abstraction layer over diverse computational resources
• Query, select and initialize compute devices
• Create compute contexts and command-queues
  

Runtime API

• Execute compute kernels
• Manage scheduling, compute, and memory resources

Memory model


What is next? Khronos will release conformance tests to ensure high quality implementations. This of course means we have wait to get first applications built on 1.0 specification of OpenCL. OpenGL is proven technology and implemented in thousands of applications. OpenCL has great potential since it is designed to integrate with OpenGL and other 3D APIs.
Time will tell how good it is.

Python 3.0 released

New release v 3.0 of Python was released on two days ago on 3rd of December. There are some significant changes in this release as stated on the top of the page:

Python 3.0 (a.k.a. "Python 3000" or "Py3k") is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed. Also, the standard library has been reorganized in a few prominent places.

 

Some of the big changes are

• print is now a function
• long is renamed to int
• expression 1/2 will return a float
• text and binary data are used instead of Unicode strings
• changes in syntax for function argument and return value annotations

 

Of course there is a more on What’s new page. This may make things more interesting for ESRI. ArcGIS is using Python as one of languages supported for geoprocessing. This will not be a problem from installation point of view because ESRI provides installer for it but from support and migration of existing models. I don’t expect ESRI to make a utility (but that would be nice) that would convert Python 2.X to 3.0 scripts. Most likely they will include some documentation like on what’s new page on Python.org or they will write up a smaller more focused document.

Anyway it is good to see these changes and hopefully that won’t cause too much trouble for GIS script developers.