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By markgreninger, on August 9th, 2012  Here is another good trick I think would be useful for our web developers. Thanks ESRI!
One of the most important parts of web application development and design is the overall performance of the application. It’s important from the beginning stages of development to implement code that does not hinder performance. There are a number of tools available to help monitor the overall performance of a web application during development.
Google provides a great web application development resource called Page Speed. Page Speed works as an in-browser tool analyzing a browsed site’s client-side code. Once Page Speed has completed the analysis of the browsed site it lists a number of client side performance improvements that can be made. The improvements are grouped in order of importance with descriptions of each improvement that can be made.
Page Speed can be downloaded from Google’s Developers site. Downloads are available for both Chrome and Firefox.
View article
By markgreninger, on June 11th, 2012  ESRI just announced that is is releasing 10.1 – there look to be a lot of enhancements. For the full list of changes, here is the 169 page document: Whats new in ArcGIS 10.1 (.pdf file)
Here are some that I find interesting on the server side (I’ve extracted the text from the document).
Connect to ArcGIS Server with a ‘Publisher’ role
In previous releases of ArcGIS Server, you had to connect to the server as an administrator in order to create or update services. In 10.1 you can now assign users the publisher role. This way you can allow users to publish, stop, and start services without giving them access to advanced administrative tasks such as adding machines to a site.
New logging framework and user experience in Manager
At ArcGIS 10.1 for Server, logs are distributed among all GIS server machines participating in your site. It’s recommended that you view and query the 10.1 logs using ArcGIS Server Manager or the ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory, rather than attempting to sort out the logs on your own.
Map services allow clients to change layer appearance and behavior dynamically
Clients of ArcGIS for Server, such as the ArcGIS web APIs, can change layer appearance and behavior in a map service dynamically. Behaviors such as which layers will appear in a map, layer symbology, layer order and position, and labeling can be achieved on the server through the use of dynamic layers. In this way, dynamic layers can increase the amount of interaction that users are able to have with your maps.
Batch geocoding using REST
In addition to finding single addresses and performing reverse geocoding, you can now do batch geocoding using REST.
You can get detailed status reports on your cache as it builds
For any cached map, you can now request a report showing level-by-level statistics of cache completion status. You can also view the status of each caching job you’ve submitted.
By markgreninger, on March 5th, 2012  SP4 Just got this via email. Click to go the site: http://resources.arcgis.com/content/patches-and-service-packs?fa=viewPatch&PID=160&MetaID=1840
There is a massive list of fixes here: http://gisupdates.esri.com/10sp4/ArcGIS/ArcGIS10sp4-issues.htm#desktop-sp4
I wish it was organized a little better – considering there must be a few hundred enhancement it’s hard to look for specific things that I want to check.
By markgreninger, on March 2nd, 2012  Link to the code I wanted to pass this along and send a thank you to Kristen. I would love for someone to create a network dataset for all of LA County – it would be a valuable resource:
Hey Mark,
I did some researching and found a way where I could acquire roadway data and assemble it into a network dataset for route analysis in ArcMap.
The process mainly involved downloading the Open Street Map data and using the program, “Open Street Map to Network Dataset” (OSM2NDS). Users of OSM’s website are limited in how many nodes that can download from the OSM website at a time. As a work around, I downloaded segments of the entire geography I was interested in, converted the OSM files to network datasets, and then appended the source files of the network datasets into a larger files and rebuilt the network dataset using the specifications of the network datasets created by OSM2NDS.
You can download OSM2NDS at this location:
http://52north.org/downloads/geoprocessing/osm2nds
And the OSM to Network Dataset conversion program is open source.
If you haven’t caught wind of this, feel free to pass this along to your colleagues.
Best,
Kristen
By markgreninger, on January 12th, 2012 I just got this post forwarded from ESRI – it appears to have a great set of courses to help you do Python scripting (Python is the scripting or automation language from ESRI). I’ve always had issues with Python – I used to be an expert ArcView 3.3 Avenue (here’s a little guide for old times sake), and I find the the geoprocessing tools are very brittle, but that may be because I don’t know enough.
Anyway, here’s a link to the ESRI Support Blog Page
Here’s the full text of the posting:
Continue reading Taming Python Scripts in ArcGIS
By markgreninger, on November 23rd, 2011 With the County moving more and more toward virtualization, I found this very nice document discussing some testing that VMWare and ESRI did to test virtual vs. physical machines.
Esri ArcGIS Server 10 for VMware Infrastructure (.pdf file)
It includes some very nice benchmarks.
Some quick takeaways:
- Doubling the number of cores doesn’t appear to double capacity. A single 4-core machine provides 73% of the capacity of an 8 core machine in terms of transaction capacity, not the 50% you might expect.
- Virtual machines, if configured correctly, will have similar capacity to physical machines (52,344 vs. 56,574 transactions per hour for physical and virtual setups, respectively).
- The optimal setup for virtualization causes issues that may well impact the viability of virtualization.
Let me explain #3.
A physical machine with 8 cores means one installation of the OS, one hard disk supporting the environment, etc. The optimal virtual machine setup has 8 virtual computers, each with one one virtual CPU (vCPU). One machine runs the ArcGIS Server SOM, which distributes mapping requests to 7 machines (each with 1 vCPU) running the SOC.
Basically we will now need to license, maintain, patch, and deal with 8 different machines as opposed to one. Imagine having to install ArcGIS Server Service Pack 1 on 8 machines instead of just 1. Theoretically with virtualization you just do it once and then recreate the images, but with each server requiring a different name, this may not be feasible.
One very much hidden piece to this covers the disk space. Each virtual server would need to have space for the Operating System, ArcGIS Server, security, etc. Let’s say around 100 Gb. That means that we would need to have 800 Gb of space to run this. Most virtual environments charge for disk space – rates vary, but per Gb charges are not inexpensive especially on fast SANs that are used for this type of stuff.
Even with costs for storage going down, it’s not free.
So – as we expand we’ll do a hybrid model – getting some physical and some virtual machines. We had major problems with virtual machines in the past, and have transitioned back to physical. I am going to be more careful this time. Virtualizing machines generally sounds good, but do it carefully.
By markgreninger, on November 9th, 2011 I just received a number of notices about Pictometry Software Updates. I believe that these are mostly for the desktop software, so if you are using Pictometry Online you probably don’t need them. As well, it appears that the EFS update will be availabel automatically.
But I thought I would pass along:
By markgreninger, on August 10th, 2011  I'm all patched up! Hi there,
Thought I would pass this zipped executable along – it’s useful to find out your patch level, and can quickly let you know if you should install the latest patch.
I do recommend installing ArcGIS Desktop 10.0 Service Pack 2 at this time – it’s got a lot of changes from the initial launch. Geocoding, for one thing, has been sped up by a factor of 10.
To use this file, do the following:
- Download this file: PatchFinder.zip (zipped .exe file)
- Unzip it
- Run the .exe file. A window will pop up showing your patch level.
- If you need to get the newest patch, here is the link to the ESRI patch site: http://resources.arcgis.com/content/patches-and-service-packs?fa=listPatches&PID=160
By markgreninger, on June 30th, 2011 Another item passed along from James Fee:
http://www.esri.com/arcgis-for-home/index.html
ArcGIS for Home Use makes GIS available to everyone. This offer is ideal for existing ArcGIS users who want to use the same powerful software at home for noncommercial personal use and for individuals who want to expand their GIS skills. However, anyone can participate in this program.
For a $100 annual fee, the ArcGIS for Home Use 12-month term license includes:
- ArcView
- ArcGIS 3D Analyst
- ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst
- ArcGIS Network Analyst
- ArcGIS Publisher
- ArcGIS Schematics
- ArcGIS Spatial Analyst
- ArcGIS Tracking Analyst
By markgreninger, on January 25th, 2011 Does anyone know how to re-order fields in ArcMap?
I have consistently had problems re-ordering fields in ArcMap. This just came to a head, since we are developing our standard data structure for a new Land Types dataset. I got a very nice data structure put together (copied from our point feature dataset), loaded up to SDE, versioned it, and successfully edited – yay! Then – oops – I was missing the EMAIL field. OK – I can add it easily – but it needs to go specifically in between the URL and the phone number field – remember this is a critical, standard layer.
How do I do this? The “Add Field” function inside of ArcMap ALWAYS adds the fields to the end of the table. I get that – it happened before in ArcView 3, but HOW do I change that?
I’m dating myself here, but in ArcView 3.x – you open the table, put it in editing mode, add the field to the end, drag the field to where you want it to end up, and then export the table (or shapefile). Voila – the field is in the new location. I was ready to do this, but some of my field lengths exceed the .dbf lengths, so I need to keep everything in a file geodatabase to keep my data whole.
Does the featureclass to featureclass do this? There are up and down arrows on the right side – but they don’t do anything!
Please help! How do you do this?
Continue reading Re-ordering fields in ArcMap – help!
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