Latest Contributions by sspeery

It is possible to e-mail all users in an ArcGIS Online org or Portal for ArcGIS site using the ArcGIS Python API.  Here's a link to a sample Jupyter notebook that can be modified and executed by a non-programmer, albeit carefully, inside of ArcGIS Notebooks as an org admin.  It's based on what I use in production to do mass notification at Virginia Tech.   @WStreet @RobertBorchert this does not require any third-party access to the portal.  Feel free to adapt this to suit your needs.  https://gist.github.com/sspeery/e930642292ca5212fc3c23b3b983c46e ... View more

I'd like to add my full agreement to everything Peter has taken the time to point out in this discussion.   At my institution, we follow a similar approach to Peter (using a modified version of the same Python code), by running a script within a cron job that looks for new users and then assigns them the entitlements that can't be set as defaults via the AGOL administrative GUI.  As Peter points out, our approach is a bit of a workaround, insofar as we assign each auto-provisioned Enterprise Login user a temporary "New User" role that serves as a flag for the ArcGIS Python API script to enumerate the new users since the last run, and then assign the entitlements that, by all rights, ought to be available to the named users at the moment of account provisioning, instead of after a delay of a few minutes between cron job runs.   The point raised in this thread that Enterprise-grade SaaS solutions should not require out-of-band configuration tweaks to deliver basic functionality is one that's worth echoing.  The promise of Enterprise Logins is that an institution can bring their own identity management infrastructure and with that, the expectation that when a user enters the system for the first time, they'll actually be able to use it.   This is not currently the case; the Python API user management workflows implemented at Michigan and Virginia Tech are performing the function of completing the delivery of baseline functionality, not, as would normally be expected of such under the hood tinkering, enhancing functionality in ways that a SaaS vendor could not reasonably be expected to deliver by default at user provisioning time.   From an IT process standpoint, the fact that ArcGIS Online doesn't "work" out of the box (in the sense that a named user, once provisioned, can immediately access and fully leverage the capabilities of the platform) means that another layer of software (our Python API workarounds) and the systems that run it must be jointly managed with the SaaS components, and because our out of band code is not an integral part of the platform, its existence, importance, or operating principles may not be not immediately obvious to others who might be tasked with administering the system in the case of staff turnover.  Certainly, documentation of modifications to enterprise systems is an integral part of performing such modifications, and that's on us, but the point here is that the administrative footprint of AGOL is larger than meets the eye as a "wrapper" of utility scripts are grafted around the SaaS core to redress the deficiencies of the latter, and the possible ways the system can break expand with the introduction of custom utility scripts that may have their own, non-obvious failure modes. I would go a step farther than Peter in advocating for yet another piece of missing functionality - the ability to pre-provision named users from an Enterprise Login identity store without any action on the part of the user themselves.  Currently, brittle and hackish as it may be, our Python-based entitlement assignment workaround does solve the "linear scalability" problem of entitlement assignment, and provides named users with the illusion that everything "just works" (within 0-5 minutes of them logging in for the first time) but, critically, this only happens after the user has logged into the organization for the first time.   Frequently, we as org admins get requests to set up groups for classes, research teams, special projects, etc., and regardless of whether one is using an invitation workflow or named user auto-provisioning, we can't do anything (add entitlements, assign group membership, etc) until the user (who may be on a geographically dispersed team, have varying levels of IT literacy, or lack a compulsive e-mail checking habit) has taken the affirmative step of pointing their browser at our organization.   Since we are bringing our own identities with Enterprise Logins, we know who these people are, but we lack the ability to initiate the process that links Enterprise Identity <user@vt.edu> with Named User <user_virginiatech>, which is a prerequisite step to entitlement assignment and everything that is currently being discussed in this thread.   There are best practices for identity and license management in the broader non-geospatial SaaS enterprise systems space, and while, to ESRI's credit, they have incorporated many of these over the years, a good development target for future AGOL releases would be a state of affairs in which a named user can be created from a previously known enterprise identity and fully endowed with the privileges they should have as a user of ArcGIS Online without either a) end user intervention or b) out of band scripting.   -- Seth Peery, Virginia Tech ... View more

Jeremy,  I'm not currently using replication, but would be happy to discuss this with you further offline to keep the current thread on-topic.  Send me an e-mail directly if you're still interested and we can chat further.  You can find all my contact information at http://gis.vt.edu. ___________________________________________________ Seth Peery Senior GIS Architect, Enterprise GIS Virginia Tech Geospatial Information Sciences Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Hi Seth- It's Jeremy Hazel, we worked together fall semester in 2009.  I'm interested to know if you are using any replication at all or are you only maintaining a single database?  I'm having some issues with compressing a replicated database and thought maybe you could help.  I've posted a thread on this forum here http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/26048-SDE-compression-and-One-way-replication. We are using the sdetable -o update_dbms_stats within a batch file here before and after our compression operation but are not updating near as many tables as you.  We are specifying the tables to update stats on individually.  Would it be worth it for you to use python to iterate through the table_registry, grab the name of each table and write it out to the -t option of the sdetable -o update_dbms_stats command in a txt file, appending a new command for each table and then run the resulting txt file as a batch process?  Just a thought... ... View more

Thanks to all who responded.  After considering your replies and advice, I wrote the following bash shell script to perform the batch analyze operation.  I've tested it on my ArcSDE instance of ~1300 objects, and found that it works pretty well in my environment.  I'm releasing what I've created back to the community in hopes that someone else will find it useful.   I've tried to generalize the script as much as possible to facilitate reuse by allowing users to configure the necessary input parameters up front.  If this is the wrong place for this (ArcScripts, perhaps?) I can post it elsewhere.  Any comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome. #!/bin/bash ########################################################################## # Batch analyze script # Query ArcSDE to get a list of all datasets in the database, then # iterate through each owner.dataset to update DBMS statistics (ANALYZE). # Output is logged to a file and optionally, a summary may be e-mailed to # the ArcSDE administrator. # Tested to work with ArcSDE/Oracle on RHEL 5. # Author: Seth Peery, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University # E-mail: sspeery@vt.edu # Last Modified 2011-04-15 # Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License #                       http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ ########################################################################## # PREREQUISITE: # Set the following variables to match your environment # N.B. be sure to chmod the referent of PASSWORDFILE to 600! OUT_DIR=/path/to/script/output          # logfile destination PASSWORDFILE=$OUT_DIR/sdepass.txt       # a single-line file with sde password SERVER_NAME="myserver.example.com"      # hostname of SDE server DBMS_INSTANCE="my_TNS_entry"            # TNS entry for SDE's Oracle Instance SEND_EMAIL=true                         # set to true to send $SUMMARYFILE ADMIN_EMAIL="foo@example.com"           # admin's e-mail address LAYERLIST=/tmp/allsdelayers.txt         # no real need to change this # Now, process the above to set password and output location variables. PASSWORD=$(cat $PASSWORDFILE | head -n 1) LOGFILE=$OUT_DIR/analyze_log_$(date +%F) SUMMARYFILE=$OUT_DIR/analyze_summary_$(date +%F) # Write the opening banner.  Note that the first line truncates # any existing logfile with the same name. # If you want this to operate silently, # replace 'tee -a' with '>>' and 'tee' with '>'. echo '********************************************' | tee  $SUMMARYFILE $LOGFILE echo '******* ArcSDE Batch Analyze Utility *******' | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE $LOGFILE echo '********************************************' | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE $LOGFILE echo 'Analyze operation initiated ' $(date) | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE $LOGFILE echo "Logging output to $LOGFILE" | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE # Here's the SQL command we send to SQL*PLUS # to get a list of all the objects in sde.table_registry { echo "set pagesize 0"; echo "set feedback off"; echo "select owner || '.' || table_name from table_registry order by owner, table_name;"; } | sqlplus -s sde/$PASSWORD@$DBMS_INSTANCE > $LAYERLIST; echo 'Processing' $(cat $LAYERLIST | wc -l ) 'layers...' | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE echo 'Any errors encountered during this process will be listed below.' | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE echo '----------------------------------------------------------------' | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE # Iterate through the layer list and run sdetable -o update_dbms_stats. numLayers=0 numProcessedOK=0 for i in $(cat $LAYERLIST); do         # Attempt to run Analyze on each layer         sdetable -o update_dbms_stats -u sde -p $PASSWORD -t $i &> /tmp/dbstats.out;         # Test for errors by grepping for the string "Error"         errorsPresent=$(grep Error /tmp/dbstats.out | wc -l)         let numLayers=$numLayers+1         if [ $errorsPresent -gt 0 ];         then                 # Log the ArcSDE error messages (anything that says "Error")                 grep Error /tmp/dbstats.out | tee -a $LOGFILE $SUMMARYFILE         else                 # Log the last line of ArcSDE dbms_stats command output                 # as our indication of success                 tail -n 1 /tmp/dbstats.out >> $LOGFILE                 let numProcessedOK=$numProcessedOK+1         fi done echo '----------------------------------------------------------------' | tee -a -a $SUMMARYFILE echo 'Done.' echo $numProcessedOK layers out of $numLayers analyzed OK. | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE $LOGFILE echo 'Analyze operation completed' $(date) | tee -a $SUMMARYFILE $LOGFILE if [ "$SEND_EMAIL" == "true" ]; then         SUBJECT="$SERVER_NAME Analyze log for $(date +%F)"         EMAIL=$ADMIN_EMAIL         EMAILMESSAGE=$SUMMARYFILE         /bin/mail -s "$SUBJECT" "$EMAIL" < $EMAILMESSAGE fi ___________________________________________________ Seth Peery Senior GIS Architect, Enterprise GIS Virginia Tech Geospatial Information Sciences Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ... View more