Thursday, July 31, 2008

ArcGIS Server Online services to include Microsoft's Virtual Earth

In latest press release ESRI stated that Virtual Earth will be accessible from ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server. Here is what can be expected:

The ArcGIS Online Virtual Earth map services will include high-resolution street maps, imagery, and hybrid maps. Street map coverage is available for more than 60 countries and regions including North America, Europe, South America, the Asia Pacific region, and Northern Africa. Aerial and satellite imagery includes worldwide coverage, but varies by region. ESRI integrates with other Microsoft products that may be part of a user’s Virtual Earth solution to incorporate internal and third-party data—making information more discoverable, more visual, and better to take action upon.

 

This are examples of the maps you will be able to use as road view, aerials and labels.

 

image

 

image

(Skytower is visible in the centre of the map. Just follow the very long shadow to find it.)

image

When will this be available? At later date, through a service pack. So, keep an eye on ESRI's support page for new service pack.

To test drive it head over here.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

ArcGIS 9.2 SP 6 released

Latest service pack  - 6 for ArcGIS 9.2 was released three days ago and modified today. The service pack can be downloaded from Downloads on ESRI Support page. Service pack 6 is available for Desktop, Server, Image server and ArcIMS.

Here is a collection of my picks for each of the patches.

 

ArcGIS Desktop, Engine and Server 

There are 97 fixes total for the desktop. Here are interesting ones.

  • NIM005525 - (dup. NIM035014): ArcMap incorrectly renders as transparent all white (RGB value of 255, 255, 255) areas of an ArcGIS Server Map Service. Areas of the map service where this occurs may not be consistent due to two reasons. First, the resampling of the image may slightly change the RGB value of white areas from 255, 255, 255 (which will be transparent) to another value, e.g., 254, 255, 255 (which will not be transparent). Second, a cached map service may respond with an image rendered on the fly instead of an image stored in the cache. The server does this when an image does not exist in the cache or is unavailable. The server creates an image on the fly. The areas in the image that are of RGB value 255, 255, 255, will be transparent. This issue does not affect pre-rendered caches.
  • NIM006017 - Extents for a MrSID file are not read correctly in ArcGIS 9.2 if the .aux contains a polynomial order > 1.
  • NIM006127 - Using Copy Raster fails with JPG 2000 if the output is greater than 4GB.
  • NIM006830 - Definition queries do not work on non-OID tables, including xy event layers.
  • NIM007535 - When applying classify renderer to a raster catalog, user defined class breaks are not retained within a map document.
  • NIM007801 - Cannot specify an output format other than a GRID with the TIN to Raster command.
  • NIM008456 - After adding data from a file geodatabase, the Up one level button crashes the application.
  • NIM009685 - Raster symbology minimum/maximum renderer does not maintain changes to the layer properties.
  • NIM011023 - Deleting or renaming a Cartographic Representation from a feature class causes ArcMap to crash when opening a .mxd.
  • NIM013328 - Application fails when writing rows into a file geodatabase within an edit session.
  • NIM031043 - Histogram colors do not match the Table of Contents colors if the raster has negative values in the Spatial Analyst toolbar.
  • NIM031638 - When used with a file geodatabase, a where clause of the form "current_date - DATE_LEFT > 365" (where DATE_LEFT is a field of date type) should return all dates greater than a year old. Instead, It returns Invalid SQL.
  • NIM032001 - ITable.DeleteSearchedRows does not honor query build with ISpatialFilter if the operation is not enclosed in Start/Stop Editing.
  • NIM032305 - Replica synchronization fails when field types other than long integer are used to define a relationship class included in the replica.
  • NIM032435 - Data Extract failure to file geodatabase when an index references fully qualified field names.
  • NIM032480 - Windows Vista only: Viewing metadata in ArcCatalog and exporting metadata using the Export Metadata dialog box in ArcCatalog fails with Vista SP1.
  • NIM032607 - The standard label engine does not create the correct anchor point for leader lined text for a feature with a representation shape override.
  • NIM032629 - Windows Vista only: Unable to delete more than two fields from a shapefile in the same ArcMap session. The shapefile is locked after the second field is deleted.
  • NIM032838 - Creating and releasing point ArcObjects continuously leaks memory in VisualBeans mode.
  • NIM032916 - There are no DBTUNE storage parameters for raster attribute tables (SDE_VAT_#).
  • NIM033517 - When using Select By Location to process a large dataset, the following error may display: An unexpected error occurred in the Select By Location command.
  • NIM033547 - Some features with very large extents can fail to refresh properly when changes in visibility occur at high zoom levels.
  • NIM033840 - Windows Vista only: Using the ESC key to cancel drawing of large datasets in ArcMap can render the application unresponsive until the drawing is complete.
  • NIM034190 - An Upgrade message still appears in ArcCatalog when connecting from a 9.2 client to a 9.3 geodatabase. When a 9.2 client dismisses the message box, the next time a 9.3 client connects, the geodatabase must be upgraded.
  • NIM034538 - Query expressions become case sensitive on a layer that has joined to a table through an OLEDB connection, returning incorrect results.
  • NIM034665 - When editing z-aware data, the Replace Sketch command does not preserve the z values from the existing feature.
  • NIM034667 - PageLayoutControl crashes when panning without any data added.
  • NIM034748 - Copying data from a file geodatabase crashes ArcMap if an index exists for a field that no longer exists. This could happen if a field with an index was deleted from a table, and the index was not properly removed by ArcGIS.
  • NIM034793 - ArcMap crashes when tracing around a large dataset.
  • NIM034983 - Published maps with multiple data frames do not clip data to the correct extent when packaged.

There are few fixes for Vista only and it is good to see ESRI working and testing it on Vista.

Complete list of fixes is for desktop is available here.

 

ArcGIS Server for .Net 

There are only 8 fixes so here they are:

  • NIM009293 - When TOC.Refresh() is executed, various properties of the Table of Contents control are not maintained.
  • NIM011133 - Toggling a subnode of a GraphicsLayer resource in the Table of Contents control displays the error "An unhandled exception has occurred. The method or operation is not implemented".
  • NIM035117 - When setting up a custom context menu on a TreeViewPlus node, there is no method to call to dismiss the Context menu once it has been brought up.
  • NIM035118 - When setting up a Context menu for a TreeViewPlus node, it is not possible to call SetupContextMenu on a node more than once per session.
  • NIM035119 - If nodes in a TOC are changed programmatically, there is no mechanism to re-apply the changes when the page or the TOC refreshes.
  • NIM035120 - If a custom Context menu is set up for a node in the TOC, right-clicking the node to bring up the context menu does not highlight the node.
  • NIM035645 - The MapresourceManager.ResourceInit event does not fire if GISResourceItem.Initialize is called or if initialization fails.
  • NIM036213 - Resources are initialized more often than necessary if initialized on demand.

 

 ArcGIS Mobile 

Only 3 fixes here:

  • NIM033867 - The ArcGIS Mobile SDK fails to connect and use the GPS receiver within the Symbol MC35 device.
  • NIM034224 - The SpatialReference.MobileToServerSquareDistance method returns the square distance calculation in mobile units (integer units) rather than in the units of the spatial reference of the map. This results in an incorrect area calculation in a polygon feature.
  • NIM034683 - When updating the vertices of complex polygon shapes, coordinates may be improperly ordered in the collection, resulting in invalid geometries that cannot be posted back to the server.

 

 ArcGIS Server for Java 

The one and only one:

 

  • NIM031066 - When snapping is enabled in the Java ADF Editing task, multiple identical polygon features are occasionally created in the geodatabase.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

ArcSDE 9.2 SP6

ArcSDE 9.2 SP6 is a separate download with it's own list of issues resolved. This list is relatively short and I have included it here.

 

ArcSDE administration 

  • NIM010594 - Spatial views created by a non-owner using the sdetable -o create_view command are not displayed in ArcGIS if the columns specified using the -c option are qualified with the table name. For example, mytable.myfield.
  • NIM013815 – The sdegroup command fails with ORA-00957: duplicate column name error. This is new at 9.2 SP4.
  • NIM033768 - The -r option does not work with the ArcSDE shp2sde -o init command utility. This option does work in previous versions of ArcSDE.
  • NIM035432 – The sdegdbrepair tool hangs when diagnosing delta tables from a geodatabase for which the Oracle database resides in a Linux 64-bit environment.

 

DB2 and Informix specific

  • NIM011157 - shp2sde returns DBMS error (-51) when the target layer name is in a language other than English and the database uses UTF-8 encoding.
  • NIM014085 - ArcIMS 9.2 cannot consume ArcSDE Raster Catalog 9.2 on DB2 9.1 on AIX 5.3.
  • NIM033424 - If user and group have identical names, ArcCatalog fails to register feature class as versioned with the following error: Failed to register as versioned. Ambiguity between user name and group when working with permissions.
  • NIM034970 - Spatial views created with synonyms in Informix are not viewable in ArcCatalog when connected as the non-owner.
  • NIM035121 - Cannot preview tables or feature classes in the ArcCatalog table view when they contain an XML column.
  • NIM035335 - DB2 9.5 - Unable to create multiversioned views due to invalid SQLSTATE values.
  • NIM035502 - ArcSDE for DB2/Informix: sdetable -o update_dbms_stats does not update statistics on XML side tables.
  • NIM035503 – An error is generated by sdetable –o update_dbms_stats if the table contains an XML column that does not have an XPath index defined.
  • NIM035920 – Informix - Reconcile causes gsrvr.exe crash after upgrading the geodatabase from 9.0 to 9.2 SP5.
  • NIM035965 – Informix - gsrvr crashes when connecting to a database that has a name that is at least 14 characters long.

 

Non-database specific fixes

  • NIM013289 - SE_stream_query crashes if the query contains too many columns.
  • NIM031767 – Java - The findAlong method throws a NullPointerException in ArcSDE 9.2.
  • NIM032275 – Making a direct connect to an ArcSDE 9.1 or 9.0 geodatabase hangs or causes a core dump on UNIX platforms.
  • NIM032429 - MapControl crashes when displaying compressed raster data from ArcSDE.
  • NIM033499 - Fatal network I/O errors occur when trying to save an edit session after creating several objects and deleting them while working with ArcMap 9.2 SP4. This problem did not occur in previous versions.
  • NIM034505 – Unable to upgrade the precision of feature datasets that contain some feature classes that have z-coordinates and some that do not have z-coordinates.
  • NIM034981 - The sdeimport command tool does not use the storage type assigned by the RASTER_STORAGE dbtune parameter.
  • NIM035231 - Add support for specifying the release version in the connection string when making a direct connect using the Java API. For example, specifying sde93:oracle10g when making a direct connect to an ArcSDE 9.3 for Oracle geodatabase.

 

Oracle General
  • NIM010856 - Compress fails due to memory leak when processing more than 60 million records from sde.state_lineages.
  • NIM033265 - If SYS.DUAL is registered as a table with ArcSDE, when using ArcObjects (e.g., IQueryDef) or SDE API queries to select sequences owned by other users from SYS.DUAL, an ORA-02289: sequence does not exist error is returned.
  • NIM033400 - When a globalid is added to a business table, queries or spatial selections executed against the table generate an underlying DBMS error (-51) or an ORA-01722 error.
  • NIM034006 – Unable to save edits made to feature classes that contain any NCLOB/CLOB columns and that have been registered as versioned with the Move the edits to the base option selected.
  • NIM034251 - After upgrading to ArcSDE 9.2 SP5 for Oracle, when zooming into a spatial view created on an SDEBINARY or SDELOB feature class, the data does not draw. No other 9.2 service packs are affected.
  • NIM035087 - Query could fail with an ORA-00904 error if the tables queried contain columns that have names that begin with keywords reserved for ST_Geometry.
  • NIM035212 - Cannot correctly input and display characters in multi-byte languages using ArcGIS Desktop.
  • NIM035230 - When renaming an ST_GEOMETRY or SDO_GEOMETRY feature class in ArcCatalog, the following error is returned: -2147216107 layer not found, Invalid pointer argument to function. This rename operation also creates an orphaned entry in the GDB_system tables.

 

Oracle Spatial
  • NIM035353 - Creating a geometric network with complex edges stored in SDO_Geometry where the snapping tolerance snaps the complex edges, returns a Wrong column type error.
 
Oracle ST_Geometry
  • NIM006153 - SQL functions for ST_Geometry for Oracle fail on geometries containing curves: ORA-28579.
  • NIM014007 - Views that union a simple table to a feature class that uses ST_Geometry storage cannot be displayed through ArcGIS.
  • NIM031596 - Spatial Type for Oracle: Sorting by the shape.LEN or shape.AREA columns on ST_Geometry data fails if the data is registered as versioned.
  • NIM031385 - Spatial Type for Oracle: An ORA-29855 error is returned when attempting to create an st_spatial_index in Oracle. (Please see technical article 34290 for a suggested workaround.)
  • NIM032090 - Spatial Type for Oracle: Incorrect variable assignment in st_type_export.validate_spref prevents user schemas from importing correctly without errors. (Please see technical article 34481 for a suggested workaround.)
  • NIM032091 - Spatial Type for Oracle: Unable to rename a table containing an ST_Geometry attribute that does not have an st_spatial_index. (Please see technical article 34986 for a suggested workaround.)
  • NIM032273 - Granting permissions on empty ST_Geometry layers fail.
  • NIM032274 - Spatial Type for Oracle: Updating more than one row at a time in an ST_Geometry feature class that has been registered as versioned with the option to move edits to the base could reset some spatial type attributes to zero, such as entity type or area. (64-bit UNIX platforms only.)
  • NIM032389 - Spatial Type for Oracle: ST_Transform returns the Oracle error ORA-01405: fetched column value is NULL when presented with empty geometry as input.
  • NIM032562 - Spatial Type for Oracle: Do not export a table's secondary object (st_spatial_index) when a table with an ST_Geometry attribute is exported using the Oracle export utilities. (Please see technical article 34985 for a suggested workaround.)
  • NIM033556 - When previewing an ST_Geometry spatial view that was created as a privileged non-owner, the “Error opening feature class” and "ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected %s got %s" errors are returned.
  • NIM033571 - Spatial Type for Oracle: The ST_Buffer operator contains a memory leak.
  • NIM034984 - Cannot add an ST_Geometry column to an existing Oracle table.
  • NIM035060 - Layers that are based on views with ST_Geometry shape columns can cause ORA-00918 errors when joined to other tables or views.
  • NIM035228 - Spatial Type for Oracle: When creating the ST_Geometry type and subtypes, the Oracle OID property must be set. (Please see technical article 34984 for a suggested workaround.)
  • NIM035229 - Spatial Type for Oracle: ST_CoordDim and ST_IsMeasured return incorrect results on some platforms.
  • NIM035236 - When sdeimport into an ST_Geometry feature class is allowed to build the spatial index by default, the creation of the spatial index takes significantly longer than when importing to an SDELOB feature class.
  • NIM035254 - Oracle patch version 10.2.0.4 makes unexpected changes to the SDE.ST_GEOMETRY schema, rendering ST_Geometry feature classes useless, and prevents creating new feature classes. (Please see technical article 34897 for more information.)
  • NIM035793 - Spatial Type for Oracle: Unable to register with ArcSDE any tables containing an ST_Geometry attribute and any NULL values. (Please see technical article 34918 for a suggested workaround.)

 

SQL Server Specific
  • NIM013281 - Local Windows - Authenticated connections no longer work on Windows 2000 or 2003 Server. This impacts Application Server (3-tier) connections only. Direct connect is unaffected.
  • NIM031830 - Windows Authenticated users who are members of a group (instead of individual logins) cannot create data. The error returned indicates they don't have matching schema.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

ArcIMS 9.2 SP6

ArcSDE 9.2 SP6 is another separate download with it's own list of fixes - a very short one.

Spatial Server
  • NIM031139 - Negative values cannot be displayed in a bar chart using CHARTSYMBOL in ArcXML.
  • NIM033709 - Spatial server crashes under heavy load when antialiasing is set to true for polygons, lines, and labels.
  • NIM031671 - GET_RASTER_INFO request on a SDE raster layer produces a crash in ArcIMS spatial server, making the service temporarily unavailable.

 

For some reason the link of issues resolved for .NET and Java ADF links to Portal Toolkit PDF...

When this is updated I'll add more information here.

Friday, July 11, 2008

What's new in ArcGIS 9.3 - Mapping

There are quite a few improvements and new features relevant to mapping and cartography. Here are some of them.

 

Convert graphics to features

This is something that should have been in ArcMap long time ago. When you want to create some features quickly just create a graphics using tools from Drawing toolbar, give it a name and from data frame context menu or Drawing menu on Draw toolbar select "Convert Graphics to Features".

grph2feat1

 

grph2feat2

After conversion you can choose to add new layer to TOC. If you do you can quickly check new feature with identify tool - name of the graphic is now an attribute of new feature class.

grph2feat3

 

Bookmark changes

Bookmark manager has options for Save and Load. This was something that many users wanted but was not easy to do. Now it is a lot easier to share and distribute bookmarks.  

bookmakrs

To some of you this may look very similar to My Places dialog. In fact file for saving bookmarks is the same as for My Places (binary *.dat file). My Places has broader scope of use than bookmarks and thy are stored in central place and can be used in numerous map documents. What's new PDF describes how to get bookmarks to My Places and vice versa.

 

Legend transparency

Yet another frequently requested feature. In previous releases there was a workaround to get this but you had to convert legend to graphics and loose the link to TOC. Now this works much better and legend is still dynamically  linked.

legend_transparent

 

Pause labeling

This could be a very popular tool. Until now labels had to be turned off in Label Manager for some or all layers. With a single click you can stop all labeling in data or layout view.

pause_labeling

 

These are some the new features. In next post I'll describe new cartographic representation functionality and enhancements.

Monday, July 7, 2008

ArcGIS 9.3 patch for Acrobat 9 PDF

This is a new patch for ArcGIS 9.3 even if 9.3 was just released. The reason for this patch is that Acrobat 9 was released after code freeze for ArcGIS 9.3.

What is in this patch? Some interesting features. In addition to have layers from ArcMap as layers in PDf now we can export attributes to the PDF document. Recommendation is to limit the fields you wish to export in ArcMap by controlling field visibility in layer properties. Attribute export is applicable to Acrobat Reader version 9 only.

 

Layers in PDF

acrobat9map

 

Attributes in PDF

acrobat9attrib

 

Now we can query the XY location of features in PDF document directly. New toolbar "Analysis" and resulting X and Y coordinates are highlighted in red on screenshot below.

reader9XY

 

If you have Adobe Acrobat 9 you can do more (from ArcGIS 9.3 help):

If that same PDF is opened in any of the pay-for Acrobat products, an extended geospatial toolset is provided, including coordinate readout, find XY, geodesic measurement, and georeferenced markup. This same extended toolset can be accessed in the free Adobe Reader if the PDF has first been resaved in Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro or Pro Extended using the "Enable for Commenting and Analysis in Adobe Reader" command.

Unfortunately, I don't have Acrobat 9 so I can't test this.

ArcGIS 9.2 SP6 announced

ArcGIS 9.2 is to get yet another Service Pack. Later this months ESRI will release Service Pack 6. It includes number of fixes - 97 for Desktop, Engine and Server and 66 fixes for development side of things (all databases, all development environments).

More about it when it gets released. If you want to check out the list see it over here.

What's new in ArcGIS 9.3 - General

ArcGIS 9.3 is now shipping and you can expect to get your copy in next month or two. In the meantime I'll put a number of posts describing new features of ArcGIS 9.3.

 

New license manager

At this release ESRI is shipping a new version of license manager - FLEXNet Publisher 11.4. You will have to use this license manager for 9.3 and you can use it for all 9.X licenses. This license manager now runs on Vista and 64bit versions of Windows. It also fixes problems when accessing license manager via RDP. If you are one of few users using options file, MAX option now works correctly.

NOTE: Previously released license manager update can't be used to serve 9.3 licenses even if it is the same version number.

 

64bit support

ArcGIS Desktop will run as 32bit application under 64bit windows. ArcReader on 64bit Solaris and Linux will run as 64bit. ArcGIS Server (AGS) and ArcIMS are 32bit applications. Make sure your preferred web server is supported under 64bit windows.

For ArcSDE things are looking better - it is available as 64bit application for Solaris, HPUX, HP Itanium and AIX. For Windows it is just 32bit application under 64bit windows.

 

Crash handling

When ArcGIS crashes it will now generate a report that can be e-mailed to ESRI for research. You can supply your e-mail address to provide any additional information to ESRI. It would be nice to be able to specify an e-mail address for crash reports. Being international distributor we are handling all support calls for New Zealand it would help us to get these reports. I'll do some research on this topic but for now it does not seems to be customizable.

 

Resource centres

There are quite few resource centres now available for ArcGIS products/technologies. For accessing them (or at least some) you have to log on using your global account. They may not be up and running perfectly (Desktop is still asking for Release Candidate 1 pass code...)

ArcGIS Desktop: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisdesktop
ArcGIS Engine: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisengine
ArcGIS Server: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver
ArcGIS Mobile: http://resources.esri.com/arcgismobile
ArcGIS Image Server: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisimageserver
ArcGIS Explorer: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisexplorer
ArcIMS: http://resources.esri.com/arcims
Geodatabase: http://resources.esri.com/geodatabase

My favourite is Mapping Centre with excellent Blog and 'Ask A Cartographer' section.

mappingCentre

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

GIS for Dummies

I am GIS consultant. If you have not heard of GIS maybe this new book will help - "GIS for Dummies". It is available for purchase on Wiley Publishers web site for US$25. Here is what it's about:

 

An easy-to-understand reference for navigating through geographic information systems (GIS)
This guide avoids equations, computer codes, and overwhelming detail and instead provides a clear explanation as to how GIS technology captures, stores, counts, characterizes, integrates, analyzes, and displays data about the earth. Readers will benefit from its understandable approach to topics such as spatial and mapping concepts, the various components of GIS systems, and the process of designing and implementing a GIS system.
Michael N. DeMers (Las Cruces, NM) is Department Head of Geology at New Mexico State University. He is also the CEO of DeMers Geographics, a company dedicated to providing GIS materials for educational purposes.

 

GISfordummies

If I see it in a bookstore I'll have a look to see what do they cover, especially in the "Design and implement a GIS system" section.