Archive for March, 2008

ArcGIS Server 9.3 APIs Part 1

March 28th, 2008 by David Stevenson

With the release of ArcGIS Server 9.3, you’ll have the following APIs available for building web applications with ESRI software:

  • Web ADF (.NET and Java)
  • REST (.NET and Java)
  • JavaScript
  • Google Maps Extender
  • Virtual Earth Extender

In addition to these APIs, ESRI is also working on a Flex API and Silverlight API that will be released post 9.3. No matter what the technical requirements are for your project, at least one of these APIs should help you get the job done. But which one? With choice comes confusion. There’s obvious strengths and weaknesses of choosing one over the other, as well as overlap in the functionalities they offer. Sometimes the choice is clear based on the technology stack and features you’re targeting. For example, if you require a secure solution and are standardized on .NET Framework then the .NET Web ADF is likely the best choice. Over the next few weeks I’ll discuss and compare these APIs in hopes of making your decision a little bit clearer, as well as share our experiences with them to date.

Posted in .NET, ESRI, Web ADF | No Comments »

Our New, Vibrating Office

March 26th, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

vibrating_floorHaving recently hired four people, we’re expanding into some more office space next to the product developers on the third floor. In the main room we’re trying to figure out if we should go more open concept (loud, but looks nice) or build a cube farm (practical, but doesn’t look nice).

We’re also trying to figure out how to solve a weird issue with the space. After we took possession we noticed that about one quarter of the floor in the main room vibrates (I think the ventilation system in the downstairs office passes under the hardwood floor). While Drew was in Dubai he acquired a large (8’x14’) Persian rug for us in an effort to absorb some of the vibrations. It sure looks nice, but it doesn’t do much to reduce the constant vibration. Any clever ideas?

Posted in Around the office | 3 Comments »

ESRI Business Partner Conference and Dev Summit Recap

March 22nd, 2008 by David Stevenson

Wow, what a conference! I spent the last week in Palm Springs with various Latitude co-workers at the ESRI Business Partner Conference followed by the Developer Summit. Steve and the account management team were busy from Saturday to Tuesday meeting with existing and potential partners from around the world. I played mainly technical support for the first couple days, assisting where I could. Ryan Cooney flew down on Monday and we spent the rest of the week at the Developer Summit, which was the main reason I was there.

So, what did we learn? On the business side, there’s a real buzz about Geocortex Essentials and the work we’ve been up to, as Steve alluded to earlier. On the technical side, there’s a few points of particular interest:

  • The .NET Web ADF at 9.3 has a number of quality and performance improvements. A lot of work has been done to support a “hybrid” model of web application develoment where you get the ease of development using client-side (JavaScript) focused technologies coupled with the power of a server-side object model.
  • It will be relatively easy to port web applications built on 9.2 to 9.3. Of course, this applies directly to Geocortex Essentials which we plan to support on 9.3 out of the gates.
  • The .NET Web ADF at 9.3 supports the .NET Framework 3.5.
  • Significant documentation improvements.
  • The new ArcGIS Server JavaScript, REST, and connector APIs make ArcGIS Server a real contender in the consumer maps arena. Although, I predict a lot of confusion around which APIs to get started with, which I plan to address in the coming weeks.

Dave Bouwman did a great job of capturing the details of the .NET ADF session as well as the others he attended, as did James Fee in his conference recap. Bottom line on ArcGIS Server 9.3 is that it looks like a great upgrade that I’m looking forward to building on with Geocortex Essentials. Finally, the two conferences were a great time and I’m already looking forward to attending next year.

Posted in ESRI, Geocortex Essentials, Web ADF | No Comments »

Back from the ESRI Business Partner Conference

March 21st, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

Most of us have trickled back after spending a several days at the ESRI Business Partner Conference/Developer Summit in Palm Springs. We had six people down there for the Business Partner Conference portion, and it was a great, productive trip with some exciting developments and decisions that we’ll be sharing in the weeks and months to come. With ArcGIS Server 9.3 right around the corner, it feels like our work with ArcGIS Server is nearing a tipping point–and I think our overarching strategy over the last 24 months is really going to be validated.

Posted in Business, Events | No Comments »

Internet Mapping Roadshow

March 18th, 2008 by Drew Millen

Today, GISTEC (Latitude business partners and Geocortex resellers) and I delivered the last of four seminars comprising the “Internet Mapping Roadshow”. We visited Abu Dhabi and Dubai in UAE, Muscat in Oman, and Doha in Qatar. The roadshow was organized by GISTEC as a way to promote web GIS solutions to a large variety of organizations. With ~200 total attendees and a lot of positive feedback, the team at GISTEC and I will regard this as a huge success.

UAE 088

(above, Dubai waterfront).

In addition to the roadshow, my trip has involved some onsite consultation with clients of GISTEC’s implementing Geocortex products in the middle-east. Adoption is gaining and so is the education. It seems our developer community is becoming more international; I’m looking forward to seeing the result of this at our user conference in April.

Posted in General Discussion | 1 Comment »

A Visit From an Old Friend

March 9th, 2008 by Kevin Rintoul

As part of this development iteration, we’re packaging Geocortex Essentials 1.2.2 onto a CD for distribution at an up and coming trade show. The CD will contain an installer for Geocortex Essentials and its quick-start guide in PDF format. When a user inserts the CD into his or her drive, we’d like the CD to launch an application that would that will allow the user to either view the quick start guide or install the software. There are lots of approaches I could have taken. One was to display an HTML page containing links to the guide and installer. This might work, but I was worried about browser security getting in the way when users wanted to run the installer. I also thought about writing a simple C# WinForms application with a couple buttons and a background image. This would work, but would require users to have .NET installed. The solution I settled on was to write a Borland Delphi application using the same approach I would have used for the C# application. It worked like a charm.

For those of you not familiar with Delphi, Delphi is a development environment that has been around for years. It allows you to create windows applications using the forms-based paradigm most developers now take for granted, but resulting applications are completely self contained Win32 executables with no external dependencies. No dependencies means no deployment issues. I almost forgot about Borland Delphi. In a former life, I wrote lots of Delphi code and as a result enjoyed many advantages that .NET developers enjoy today including forms based development, an event driven programming model, intellisense, a powerful IDE and sophisticated debuggers. Delphi was way ahead of its time. Many of the features that C# developers enjoy today were available in Borland Delphi, as early as 1995 or even earlier in its predecessor, Turbo Pascal which has been around since 1983. Interestingly, the inventor of Delphi, Anders Hejlsberg was also the inventor of Visual J++ and most recently the C# programming language after he left Borland to work at Microsoft. This would explain why Delphi was so good.

While I am not suggesting that we go backwards and port Geocortex Essentials to Delphi, it was nice to revisit an old friend and find that it is still useful, even after all of these years.

Posted in General Discussion | No Comments »