Stuck with a view of the Pacific

Not yet home- I've been bumped twice (Easter, snow in O'Hare), so I'm spending the afternoon in SF- the tragedy of it all :) .

Anyway, my final dev summit opinions

One big benefit of the Dev Summit is that the session have all been recorded with screenshots; by all means, listen to any session you have the slightest interest in- it will be worth your while.

Building a 3-D City

9.3 is supporting 3-D in a big way. An "Import 3-D Model" tool was shown, with both Sketchup & COLLADA types, among others listed. The geometries supported by multi-patch (rings and triangle networks) were described, and enough relevant examples were presented to show when you'd want a ring (flat surface) or one of the two triangle sets (accommodate a continuous surface in 3-D). There's programmatic access to multi-patch, so a quick color/texture scheme can be easily applied.
Aside from that, ESRI is focusing on storing and managing 3-D models- not necessarily bulk creation- that's partner-space (though tools for individual buildings will be deployed, though it may be more sensible to use Sketchup or another 3-D design tool).
The Question & Answer was interesting. Among other things, it confirmed the role of ESRI's business partners in bulk (programmatic) 3-D creation, as well as some idea of what they're thinking about for 9.4- perhaps an architectural style symbol library and other ease of using existing 3-D data. ArcScene & ArcGlobe will continue in the foreseeable future.

Some tips that should have been obvious from the star (i.e., obvious to me but not):

• Use Scale dependencies! The presenters recommended at most 5-6 different layers for use in a 3-D environment, with more complex models (kml, sketchup, multi-patch) being limited to the closest features. Use extrusion for slightly farther away, and footprints for even farther.


• Use multiple footprints for a building to extrude properly. Most skyscrapers (or even mid-rise blocks) have differing elevations. Instead of making one solid building footprint, create a series of rings that complete the footprint and specify elevation information for each ring (separate the footprint component ID from the building ID).

Designing Map Caches

This was a session that I had planned to listen to after the conference, but decided to sit in. Aside from the ArcGIS Server guys, they also had a representative from ArcWeb Services (i.e., the guys who have done the most caches to date).
A lot of good take-away tips on building caches, including what image type to use (JPG for backgrounds, PNG8 for vector overlays) and what datasources to use (use a local GDB for tile creation; we can always repoint the data to an SDE afterwards).
The 9.3 interface for cache creation & maintenance looks pretty good; it'll be a lot more flexible (we're not hit too badly by it- our base background is generated in 8-20 hours, depending on image format).
This session also drove home to me the ESRI philosophy on map services: cache EVERYTHING that doesn't need to be more current than the time in which you can recache it (up to the hour or day can be cached, depending on your hardware). I'll bet this is going to result in a number of setups where a second(ary) server will be brought online to do constant caching, with maybe some excess capacity for hosting additional web serving SOC clients.

Effective Geodatabase Programming

Another session where the slide deck will become a great reference. I don't do too much programming against our database; however, the information at the session was pitched just low enough that I understood the concepts & reasons for their recommendations. I'll at least be able to be conversant with people I work with who do this stuff to convey the issues raised. One of the nice things about the Dev Summit is there was ample time in the schedule to take a session or two in topics that weren't my area of expertise- I honestly like cross-training in other areas.

Closing session

Basically, a good forum for feedback. A lot of hand-voting for what worked and what didn't (the intro sessions seemed to have helped, sit-down vs. boxed lunches was a draw). Some future directions were talked about; at this point, ESRI has nearly backed themselves into a corner to release a functional SDK for the File Geodatabase. Anything less then full access to it (without a ESRI DLL to be deployed in addition) was met with tepid response. Two other takeaways from the Q & A:

• VB6 is moribund (if not dead), get over it


• IMS is moribund (if not dead), get over it