ESRI UC: Thursday afternoon & Friday morning

Geoprocessing: The Road Ahead

Thursday afternoon featured one of the sessions I had been most interested in attending- Geoprocessing- the Road Ahead. From what was featured in the Plenary and the Desktop Road Ahead, it's been clear that a lot of effort has been placed in enhancing the geoprocessing analysis tools and making them easier to use.

The presentation expanded on the themes already described in other sessions:
1) A new user experience
2) ModelBuilder enhancements
3) Python incorporation
4) New tools

As seen in the Plenary and anytime you looked at 9.4, a new Geoprocessing menu is present, pre-loaded with some of the most commonly used tools. This menu is customizable, so you can place your own favorites in the menu. The tools will be findable under search and has had the search terms expanded; searching for 'cookie-cutter' will bring up the Clip tool. Taking another nod from the server environment, the Results window (you use that, right?) has been moved to its own, hideable window. Instead of a command-line window, a full featured python window is available.

ModelBuilder has gotten a few enhancements which will enable for more complexity in the models. Iteration types have been expanded, with built in support of 'all files in folder' and 'all feature classes in workspace' type for each loops. The model-specific tools (Select Layer..., etc.) can be found in a special menu in ModelBuilder (Model Tools)- making it easier to find these utilities (and simultaneously remove them from the interactive geoprocessing experience). The user interface is also improved; an undo/redo button set (including model layout changes) has been added and tool tips for parameters now appear when hovering over a tool. Particularly useful to me is the 'pop-up connection' feature, which will let you specify which parameter an input should be directed to when making the connection between them.

As has been announced, Python is the scripting library for ArcGIS. A lot of work has been done to make the 9.4 ArcGIS Python library more 'pythonic'- it's now going to be a module (arcpy), so we won't need to instantiate a geoprocessing object. There are three main packages: mapping, geoprocessing, algebra (as in map algebra). ArcGIS will also be able to expose external libraries (such as the r statistical package) as tools- so you can place your custom code as simple menu items. As part of making the arcpy module, intellisense support and pyDoc documentation has also been enhanced.

Some features of the mapping library were highlighted. Essentially, all properties of an MXD document will be exposed, and custom maps can be made via scripting. We saw PDF support- I'd like to know what other formats will be supported- all of the export options?

The new analysis tools were featured. Right now, there are 90 of them; the development team thinks it might be above 100 by the time 9.4 ships. A big new grouping of tools are 'Editing tools'- think some of the editing features (e.g., trim, extend) being applied en masse on an entire feature class or selection set.

A lot of tweaking has been done with the Spatial Analysis tools to improve performance and usability, and classic map algebra has been reintroduced. New is the concept of a 'fuzzy overlay'- instead of producing a determinate output, a probabilistic result is generated; this support set theory's AND, OR, and GAMMA (links) functions. Image analysis has also gotten easier with 9.4; in particular, it's easier to create a classification training set and analysis can be done on just the data in the view, making it easy to prototype the analysis.

Like Spatial Analyst, Geostatistical Analyst has also had the UI and defaults improved to make it more ready to use and provide meaningful results. Also, ecological sampling tools have been provided- including a tool to determine additional sampling locations based on kriging standard areas (this was developed by the EPA to improve analysis capabilities over the classic random points).

The 3-D features have been improved; aside from the new tools covered in the Plenary, all the 3-D analysis tools support terrains as well as TINs. Also, some tools to help improve native LiDAR processing have been included, such as being able to identify outliers and blunders in point data and remove points under polygons (water masks).

A lot of the improved functionality in Network Analyst were featured in the Geodatabase Road Ahead session. 3-D routing will also be available. Service Area and Closest Facility processing will be available via REST; this will make a lot of Flex applications more fun!

ArcGIS Explorer: Beyound the Basics

My office has played with ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) off and on over the past couple of years. With the AGX 900 release, it looks like it's time again. AGX is ESRI's desktop product that they're targeting at 'Geographic Information Users'- the people who need to browse GIS data but necessarily do complex analysis. The new features of AGX (Geopresentations/2D-3D/etc) were briefly mentioned (those would be the basics we're going beyond); this session covered how to customize and extend the application to make it fit your particular organization's needs. Some data setup tips (that are applicable in ArcGIS Desktop and KML export as well) were covered. First, in order to keep the download small, the AGX core software is missing a few things, like fonts and full projection support. These can be separately downloaded as expansion packs. Second is the reminder that you should spend some time on layer configuration- 3-D layers need to be authored in ArcGlobe, HTML pop-ups should be enabled and set how you want users to see their data.

All I can really say is that everything is extraordinary simple to set up and implement. You can build new base maps, implement custom splash screens, and customize the toolbars without any programming experience- the first can be done within Explorer, the latter two through an Application configuration manager that ships with it. If you want to develop your own tools, you can create 'add-ins' in .NET- the SDK has a wizard to start the process and take care of the more annoying programming overhead, so you can get right to writing the add-in's functionality. Add-ins will support Buttons, Dockable Windows, Galleries, and Extensions; they're bundled in .eaz files for easy transport and saved in a 'well-known' folder location (i.e., everybody has the same folder structure, so we know were to look).

Server Optimization

Optimization by it's nature is a 'tips and tricks' type of session, and it's better to look at the slide deck than rely on anybody's summary. One of the interesting things I took out of it is that we really are running a small setup (web/SOM/SOC box pulling in data from a separate SDE server). A lot of the cases shown involved optimizing multiple and even 8-server+ configurations.

Closing session

Ah, the end. If you've been at a closing session at and ESRI conference before (UC or Dev Summit), this should be familiar. The winners from the Map Gallery were announced (Walks in Portland, Irish names, San Luis Obispo all pretty prominent). Jack re-iterated the concept of GeoDesign. Through the questions raised at the conference and at the Q & A, a big theme emerged- Community, providing ways to enable GIS users of all levels to connect continuously and share what they do. It sounds like ESRI will be spending a lot of time in that in the future.

A new part of the Q&A process involved voted-on video questions. The top vote getter was what were ESRI's plans after 9.4. While there is still nearly a year to go before 9.4 is released, the big evolution that is being considered is moving to marketing ESRI (the company) as a platform or product. I'm honestly surprised they haven't already; at least in my area (DC), they do a fair amount of professional services, training, and other consulting.

Some improvements to the conference format were suggested. For those of you who found the rooms to warm, you'll be disappointed that someone thanked the staff for not freezing them this year (I concur, even if I found the rooms a little cooler than I like- I'm just used to DC's 90 degrees - 90% humidity summer climate). A way to pre-screen, recommend, or vote on paper presentations was also suggested; the paper sessions can sometimes be of variable quality. Likewise, better searching for the sessions would be useful; at the end of my paper presentation (a somewhat technical one on Python), I had someone approach me and ask why I wasn't in the program. It turns out he was looking through the Technical Workshops section- the ESRI provided 'our software and how to use it' sessions, instead of the Paper Presentations.

A couple of questions about ESRI as a company and how it positions itself in (and thus structures) the GIS industry. Jack's response on being a private company is classic- "running a private company is horrible but it's better than the other options". Jack sees the company as providing the services to to the GIS professionals (and some prosumers), who will then develop the maps and tools used by the consumers (rather than targeting the consumers of GIS data directly). ESRI is very excited to support NGS's Geomentoring program to place GIS into primary and secondary education, and encouraged us to volunteer.

This was a busy conference, and while I learned a lot, I also came away with some questions that I hope to explore a bit more thoroughly in the future.