Geocortex Blog

ESRI’s Web ADF ships with Map Tips.  So what is this new Dynamic Map Tips feature in Geocortex Essentials 2.3 all about?

There’s a subtle, but important difference between Geocortex Essentials Dynamic Map Tips, and the Map Tips provided by ESRI’s Web ADF: as their name suggests Dynamic Map Tips are loaded dynamically, when the user requests them.

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Today we cut the 2.3 release of Geocortex Essentials.  If you are using or evaluating Geocortex Essentials you will definitely want to take a look at the features in this release. 

We’ve introduced new features that a lot of our customers have been asking for, and the new installer is going to really help with installation, upgrades, site migration and overall management of Essentials deployments. 

The Geocortex Support Center downloads page contains the installer, and related documentation including release notes. 

I highly recommend consulting the release notes to get a complete understanding of what’s included in this release.  In the meantime, here’s a quick list of highlights:

• The new installer
  • Support for future in-place product upgrades (for example, upgrade from 2.3 to 2.3.1, or 2.3 to 2.4)
  • Continued support for side-by-side installation
    • Also allows side-by-side installation of the same version for multiple deployments on one server
  • Site migration features (to migrate sites through environments like dev –> test –> prod, or to support migration from one version of Essentials to the next like 2.1 –> 2.3, or 1.5.2 –> 2.4)
• Dynamic Map Tips
  • Map tips which query features on demand instead of all at once to leverage massive performance improvements over basic Map Tips
• Windows Integrated Single Sign-on for sites using Active Directory security
• New “Delta” project file type
  • Saves only the changes made during a user’s session, so administrative changes to the site and map service are preserved when the project is restored
• New Save/Open project workflow
  • Uses Save & Save As functionality
  • Includes a server-side file browser for locating and storing project files
• New “Compact” report type displays selected information and search results in a compact form in the left side panel
• Interface redesign of the Selection Summary control
• Upload CSV File
• Extract user-created markup to shapefile
  … and many others

As a .NET shop (primarily), we need to stay on top of Microsoft’s software releases, especially when a new version of .NET comes out.  .NET 4 was released on Monday and so we’ve been putting some effort into trying our software on the new platform in order to eliminate any future surprises.

As expected, there were a bunch of little things that cropped up but nothing too major.  Among the issues there was one in particular that was a bit interesting. (more…)

ESRI’s Community Maps Program enables your organization to contribute geographic data to become part of an online community map.  If you are interested in making your data broadly available through ArcGIS Online – particularly high-resolution imagery, detailed street data, and topographic data – then check out the description and fill out a participation form.  Contributions are being added to the World Imagery, World Street, and World Topographic Maps.  See some recent contributions here.

How have five days gone by since my initial post and two weeks since the ESRI BPC/Dev Summit? I think a good way to judge the impact of a conference is not just how busy you were while you were there, but the required extent of follow-up on your return.

Others (such as James Fee) have already done great job of recapping these gatherings. Rather, I’ll offer a few quick thoughts from my perspective, since people ask about how things went for us.

During the BPC plenary, I finally experienced the power of Twitter. I signed up for an account some months ago, and have been sitting on the sidelines as an observer (personally, I really don’t think regular tweeting is for me). It was a remarkable experience to sit in the BPC plenary and follow tweets on my iPod Touch as other people in the audience were sharing their thoughts in real-time on what they were seeing up on stage. It enriched my conference experience.

In addition to our new Platinum Business Partner status, we were also grateful to receive an “ESRI 2010 Worldwide Partner of the Year” award. We were in fact selected from among ESRI Canada partners, though it could be misconstrued we’re the ESRI 2010 Worldwide Partner of the Year rather than a ESRI 2010 Partner of the Year (as in, among the partners located outside the USA).

Darin did a joint presentation with Susann Nilsson of ESRI, which I’m told went well (unfortunately I missed it due to a parallel meeting). Apparently Jack Dangermond quietly slipped in at some point, and at the end got up and spoke for five or ten minutes which included some nice things about our product-based approach to serving customers.

We were a Gold Sponsor, and our spot in the exhibit hall (located between the bar and food) went really well. We primarily previewed what’s coming as part of Geocortex Essentials 3.0 (think REST), and people really seemed to get what we’re doing. For those keen on our take on where we’re at relative to ESRI, we’ve never felt in a better position for where things are going. I’ll talk a lot more about all this at my next Geocortex Solutions for ArcGIS Server: Current Status and the Road Ahead webinar for customers, so be sure to sign up.