Developing Geoprocessing on Server

Or, how to do geoprocessing & make it work.

Despite being good with creating analysis processes, I'm still not completely comfortable with the Model Builder environment- it's not a complete scripting solution, and getting a model to run in a server environment has generally had problems. This session (admittedly partially given before over the web) was pretty much a best practices for developing to server (or developing a model in general) with an eye to what additional functionality is coming along in 9.3 (like layer transparency, to begin with). The slide deck (hopefully up soon) will definitely be a great reference.

Mentioned throughout the presentations today is the fact that pretty much any client, be it ArcMap, ArcExplorer, a Web ADF site, or even a mashup or python (or ruby, php, and pretty much any other language) program will be able to utilize a geoprocessing task- that really puts the onus on getting the task designed correctly in the first place.

REST & Mashups

REST

It was packed, and naturally people more vocal than me have already posted (the first link, James Fee's, is especially good at explaining the technology).

Some notes:

• The structure to access layers is well-defined, but a little human-unreadable (admittedly, it's a programming interface). It'd be nice to address a layer by an alias (and possibly not have to worry about a reordering of the map document breaking everyone's programs)


• One of the things I'm interested in is a possible replacement for the IMS Metadata Service. I haven't taken a look at the metadata delivered, but I'll bet any replacement simply leverages the information published through the REST service.


• The 9.3 release will be read-only, with writing probably(?) in 9.4


• True curves (i.e. arcs) are densified (changed to line segments) when served out. While I wasn't completely clear on it, it sounded like that was standard across the ADF (or I'm being wishful; it currently causes a small failure).

Mashups

Another good session. Dave Bouwman has another good review up. I'd say it's even simpler than what Dave makes it out to be, but then again, I started off programming for money as a webmaster in grad school. I will need to dive into Dojo some more- I haven't done complex sites very recently. Dave's point about simple sites is right- and the biggest message I'm hearing from my clients- we need specialty apps that get the data across clearly.

A lot of the Q & A was taken up trying to nail home the fact that javascript is a client-side language! Once the data is transferred to the user, the server doesn't touch it unless it's uploaded back (which isn't completely out-of-the box).

ESRI Dev Summit Plenary

1. Spatially Adjusted


2. davebouwman.net


3. Rise & Shout

Check the above for very thorough descriptions. Rather than regurgitate the same, here are some thoughts:

• The javascript frameworks are going to generate a ton of new apps- it's an opportunity for any organization that has ArcGIS Server running to serve their data & have everybody else use it without messing with it.


• More importantly, the web client support lessens the need to host both mapping applications & services on the same ArcGIS Server box (app vs. data).


• I'll talk about it in the mashup post, but the javascript libraries look to be dead simple if you've done a mashup before (or even some moderate DHTML use & read through the google maps examples)


• ArcGIS Mobile- I agree with Dave on wanting to try it out. The presentation they gave was a very good intro walkthrough.


• Deployment to mobile devices is a lot easier- we can download from ArcGIS Server (makes it a lot easier to do a quick install). Even a quick "view the map on the cellphone" app would help us at this point (Parks people out in the field).


• ArcGIS Explorer is maturing- I'm going to look forward to the future releases they showed.

So there's probably a reality distortion field set up in Palm Springs (the servers responded WAY too quickly), but from a programmer's standpoint, 9.3 looks to be a good release.