map butcher

I’m back from Palm Springs, and wanted to reflect on this years ESRI Developer Summit. In summary I had a really great week, meeting old and new friends and experiencing what is a really good conference. It’s a long way to go, but definitely worth it, especially given the nature of the 10.0 release.  Say what you like about ESRI, but I think post ADF they’ve lifted their game and there is no sign that things are changing on that front. So here are my personal highlights in no particular order.

1. Open Source Myths

Despite what people map think  ESRI are quite happy to have FOSS4G on display.

I also enjoyed a cool demonstration of GDAL analysis by the folks from the ESRI Prototype lab. I was disappointed to hear Jeremy Bartley’s reasoning behind not open sourcing the JavaScript API – apparently it’s an issue of ‘control’….?

2. arcpy.mapping

I’m not a pythonite but the new mapping API might put the very successful DS MapBook to bed. I thought about all those times I’ve sat there and done manual data audits at client sites – bye bye and good riddance to that manual overhead. Also the arcpy.sa includes some numpy goodness which pythonites will enjoy

3. GeoDesign

I may have had it wrong – I’m starting to come around to what this is about, I enjoyed the GeoDesign lightening talks especially the Azavea guys – they’ve done some really nice stuff. The concept of GIS as a scenario building tool is not new, but our ability to produce tools, especially on the web which quickly allow us to design and tweak our data to visualise our scenarios is a hurdle we need to leap.

4. The FeatureLayer everywhere

The new feature layer and feature service facility is implemented into each of the three web apis (JavaScript, Flex, Silverlight). A feature server is not a new idea, but ESRI’s implementation is powerful and integrates sweetly across the stack. I like the client side query features capability cutting down the need for round trips to the server plus feature layers are really the basic building block of the editing capability of the web apis.

5. Query Layer – you gotta love the SQL

I love SQL – nice and functional – the new query layer, low level within the geodatabase API (SQLWorkspace) and in the ArcMap UI is cool. It’s great that we no longer have to ‘register’ data with SDE to use it. I never got a chance to catch a hold of anyone to ask whether ST_ functionality can be used – but I understand pl\sql can not be executed via query layers yet.

6. Add Ins

It seems the add-in concept from ArcGIS Explorer has made its way into ArcGIS Desktop. This is an improved framework for creating customisations not only from a developer perspective, but also from an administrative perspective. Add in’s are compiled into a single compressed file with a .esriAddIn extension – these contain a configuration XML file, the binaries and any necessary resources (dependencies etc) and are registered with the client by being placed into a registered folder known to the client. There’s also a new installation utility but the old customise route is not disappearing. Interestingly there’s a new esriRegAsm utility as pre version 10 COM components have to be re-registered once 10 is installed – this may be a bit of a headache if you’ve got a lot of customisations in your desktop.

7. Eating your own dog food

Because ESRI are now running their own server in the cloud to support ArcGIS.com they have to ensure it’s a reliable stand up and high performance server able to run on hardware and cheap OS – They’ve been doing  a lot of testing across the board and have got some rather good results running on RHEL  - I hope they stand up and be counted at the 2010 WMS shootout?

8. REST binding for server extentions

There has always been a SOAP binding for server object extensions, but it was a bit dark and tricky around the edges – ESRI have addressed this and done more by adding in new classes for exposing server object extensions via their SOAP and REST channels – this is pretty powerful stuff. In a nutshell the XML and JSON serialisation/de-serialisation has been taken care of by some helper classes and a nice WSDL template is provided (you used to have to handcraft your own) for SOAP. New RestResource and RestOperation classes are provided for REST – at this stage the REST support is limited to mapping services. There’s also support for MSD services via flag with the ServerTypesExt.dat – and I liked the feature which allow methods to be exposed and configured as capabilities within ArcCatalog and (new at 10) ArcGIS Server Manager.

9. User Presentations and Developer To Developer Sessions

Love them – have more of them!

There were a lot more goodies on offer so if you didn’t make it or couldn’t make a session because of a clash then head to the developer summit site for the tech session and plenary videos. Finally thanks to all at DTSAgile for a great BBQ we used some sophisticated techniques to find the house.