ArcUser – now as an electronic magazine

Being New Zealand distributor for ESRI means we get the publications like Arc User from USA. Because of that I don’t often go to the News section of ESRI’s home page.
Today I went there to check of of the article I saw before. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that ArcUser is available as electronic flipbook magazine. To view this you must have Flash player installed.

You can flip the pages like with real magazine or use the arrows at the bottom of the screen.

Going to the first page also shows how to use 3D Issue publications (and ArcUser is published using this technology). Quick start explains Quick Start, Icons options and also includes FAQ section.



As expected there is a search functionality built in.

If you don’t want to view on-line the magazine can be downloaded as an off-line version (this didn’t work for me this time) or you can resort to good old PDF.
PDF version has a slightly sharper text rendering while graphics is the same.  PDF may take longer to download than the flipbook. The latest issue is just over 10 MB.
Content of the ArcUser is as it always was – great with range of articles from introduction to developer level.

ArcGIS 9.3/9.3.1 GDB replication patch

A new patch is released for ArcGIS 9.3 and 9.3.1 and it addresses issues with simple relationship synchronization issues. Full description of the issue:

NIM045076 - Deleting an origin feature in a simple relationship automatically sets the destination's foreign key value to null. If you synchronize more than one such edit to a child, only the foreign key value for one of features is set to null in the child. For example, if you delete 4 records in the origin table of a simple relationship, and synchronize these edits to the child replica, only 1 of the 4 records in the destination table in the child replica would have their foreign key value set to null.

Note that SP 1 for 9.3 must be installed prior to installation of this patch. Patch is 1 MB and can be downloaded from this page.

New videos added to ESRITV

In the latest update ESRI has added two new videos to ESRITV channel on YouTube.

First video is titled Web Maps Make GIS More Relevant to the Enterprise while second one is Design Strategies for Web Maps.

First video is just over 5 minutes long and it is demoing several examples of ArcGIS Server applications in Flex API.





Strategies for web maps video talks and shows examples of Flex API applicataions for City of Greeley. The initial development was 200 hours and later applications were a lot faster to develop. There are also examples of City of Houston and Virginia Department of Emergency Management. Unfortuately, it didn't show me what I was expecting from reading the tile...

ArcGIS 9.3.1. TFRD metadata patch

The first patch for ArcGIS 9.3.1 is out. This patch is relevant only if you are using NITF data and ArcGIS NITF extension 1.1
Full description and download of patch is available on this ESRI’s support page.

ESRI® announces the ArcGIS 9.3.1 Desktop TFRD metadata Patch. This patch addresses a TFRD medata issue for ArcGIS NITF extension 1.1. We recommend that ArcGIS NITF extension 1.1 users, who work with TFRD data, download and install this patch.

Students develop 3D computer interface

A group of students at Northeastern University has developed a prototype of 3D computer interface. This gave them 1st place at Senior Capstone competition for 2009. This is still a prototype but operation of it looks similar to what Tom Cruise was doing in the Minority Report.



But for this interface you don’t need the gloves to manipulate and interact with applications.
The prototype is working fine but it is a bit bulky. That does not diminish its functionality and applications.
Here is the video of test drive (4:40 long).


3D Computer Interface from Free Flow on Vimeo.


Once big companies get on hold of this I’m sure it will become small and fine tuned so we all can have the Minority Report experience.

ArcGIS 9.3.1 new features - Part 1

Latest version of ArcGIS is in shipping and end users can expect it some time in June. This version has quite a few new features. I will show some of them and what impact they may have on usual workflow.


Optimized map service
This new feature allows users to prepare, analyze and publish a map document as new type – optimized map service. This also includes a new format for the service MSD (Map Service Definition). In example below I have a file geodatabase with New Zealand Topographic database with large number of feature classes. New toolbar, Map Service toolbar contains all functionality required for analysis and publishing of optimized map service.



First step is Analyze of the map. Functionality of this command is similar to the one in Geodatabase Toolset extension but with more functions and options. In the case of my test MXD Analyze has shown the following:



Problems are categorized as Messages, Warnings and Errors. There is a reasonable description for each of these. If a row is highlighted and context menu is invoked a set of options is available.


This is very handy option even if you are not going to publish the document as service. This will definitely be a tool for identifying bottlenecks in a map. To see how map performs use Preview option on the toolbar.



In the menu bar of the preview you’ll see the draw time for map with current settings.
After map is fixed it is saved as MSD.



Now we are onto last step – publishing a service. Publishing has few steps.

Step 1.


Step 2.


Step 3.


There is an optional set of setting for the service labelled as “Set display options”.



After this you will have a new optimized map service on your ArcGIS server.
In the next post I’ll describe packaged layers. Till then have fun tuning your MXDs.