topic Re: photo attachments for 10 in ArcGIS for Windows Mobile Questions

photo attachments for 10

RO — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:24:56 GMT

The what's new documents about talk about the ability of 10 to support photo attachments, however I can't find information on doing this either in code or just via the project center.
I've also seen a video showing it.
I'd like to get information on how to do this even in just the project center, any help appreciated.

Re: photo attachments for 10

MaximilianGlas — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:05:20 GMT

Would be also interesting for me. Had have a look for it but can't find any information about how doint it.

Re: photo attachments for 10

RO — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:38:38 GMT

I know this is really frustrating, the what's new mentions "photo attachments":

http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgismobile/whats-new.html

However this is the only documentation I've found. One of the videos shown on the ESRI site shows a fellow doing photo attachments but no description on how.

I'm finding the documentation for ArcGIS Mobile 10 to be absolutely dismal for the applications (not SDK).

Re: photo attachments for 10

nev — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 04:14:54 GMT

I'd also like to know how to do this. Agree with your comments Ron, most of the "Documentation" is just marketing material showing how wonderful and easy it all is but very little on how to actually do anything. Frustrating

Re: photo attachments for 10

AkhilParujanwala — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:09:57 GMT

It pretty simple, and it is somewhere in the Mobile 10 documentation on how to do this, as well as Field Crew Tracking.

How to add Photo for Data Collection Mobile 10:

1) Import shapefile into your SDE geodatabase (using import)

2) Click on Preview, then change the dropdown to Table view (so that you see the table, not the geometry)

3) Click on Table Options icon > Add Field > Give a Name like "Photo" > the data type will be "Raster"

4) Click ok and your done > make sure you add Global IDs and Version your feature class

5) Continue to create the Mobile Project in MPC and then test your project in ArcGIS Mobile 10 (Tablet), and in the Photo field you will have the option to browse for an Image and attach it.

If you have any further questions please let me know.

Re: photo attachments for 10

BillRose — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:02:59 GMT

It pretty simple, and it is somewhere in the Mobile 10 documentation on how to do this, as well as Field Crew Tracking.

How to add Photo for Data Collection Mobile 10:

1) Import shapefile into your SDE geodatabase (using import)

2) Click on Preview, then change the dropdown to Table view (so that you see the table, not the geometry)

3) Click on Table Options icon > Add Field > Give a Name like "Photo" > the data type will be "Raster"

4) Click ok and your done > make sure you add Global IDs and Version your feature class

5) Continue to create the Mobile Project in MPC and then test your project in ArcGIS Mobile 10 (Tablet), and in the Photo field you will have the option to browse for an Image and attach it.

If you have any further questions please let me know.

Thanks for this information. I too have been frustrated with the documentation. Can you provide the reference for these instructions?

Re: photo attachments for 10

AkhilParujanwala — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:39:26 GMT

To anyone who wants to know where you find some very interesting materials and the reference on how to create a Photo field (raster) for Mobile Projects, here's the link

http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/devsummit10/tech.html

You will be presented with many video, in the drop down menu, select 100, so that you can see all available movies.

Press CTRL + F then type "mobile" and you will see 4 movies that are about Mobile GIS, they are all very good.

For the exact Photo reference, you will want to download this video
Using and Configuring Esri's Mobile Technology - David Cardella, Jay Chen, when you download this, it will be called DEV59. Jump to the 41 minute mark and Jay will start to talk about how to add the Raster field.

There are 2 ways to do this. One method, is the one I explained above, create a feature class and then add a field with a raster datatype. Remember, by doing it this way, you can only have 1 raster field.

The second option Jay mentions is a little confusing, he keeps saying "drop field" or "Raw Field", I found it difficult as to what he is saying, but he did mention that the Field name must be "Picture_", in which you can have multiple images stored.

I hope this helps.

Re: photo attachments for 10

AkhilParujanwala — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:08:32 GMT

Here's another link that gives instructions just like I have explained already.

http://resources.arcgis.com/content/kbase?fa=articleShow&d=30796

Re: photo attachments for 10

BillRose — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:54:09 GMT

Here's another link that gives instructions just like I have explained already.

http://resources.arcgis.com/content/kbase?fa=articleShow&d=30796

Akhil: Thank you for your useful links here. You've done the forum community a service here.

However, the locations of these pages validates the concerns about the 10.0 documentation. The first link is buried in the proceedings of a past developer conference, the second in a Knowledge Base article which was published for 9.3.1 and earlier versions.

This content (and I suspect a great deal of additional 10.0 content) needs to be directly indexed from the 10.0 documentation. The movies mentioned above are ok for an introduction but they lack detail. GIS users need to know more about how these technologies work.

Re: photo attachments for 10

AkhilParujanwala — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:50:30 GMT

Your welcome, I agree there needs to be a little more documentation on the new stuff that we as developers and consumers need.

Fortunately in this case adding a photo is quite a simple task, in which there's not much needed in terms of documentation.

I think I have figured out what Jay was trying to say in terms of the second option of creating a Photo field.

Once you imported a shapefile into the Geodatabase (making it a Featureclass) > add a new field > name it Picture_<something> > then the field type "Blob".

I have yet to try this, but hopefully it works for those who want to add more than one picture.

Trust me, I spend a good amount of time trying to deploy a mobile project without success, and all the readings and videos I have watched did not show, how this is done for ArcGIS Mobile 10.

PS: There is a video for deploying Out-of-the-box solutions for ArcGIS Mobile 9.3.1, but 10 is much different.

Re: photo attachments for 10

RO — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:05:45 GMT

Hi Akhil,

Thanks for the information it is very useful, but I agree with previous posters, this information needs to be documented. I've been working with Mobile since 9.3 and done a few major projects with it and am very comfortable and familiar with mobile development.
The documentation put out for things like the REST and web apis are FIRST RATE, everything is there, explained well, illustrated. This is probably why in part they are so successful.

The problem with Mobile 10 is that it is a major departure from 9.3, from the project center, to the map cache changes to even just deploying mobile on devices.
Simply put the documentation is complete and utter garbage and as seen there is very little input/participation by ESRI members in this forum.

I have figured out most things but through trial and error and frustration. This has caused me to for a major telecom client nix the idea of even using mobile 10, this consensus was followed up by developers on my team who feel the exact same way, they can't figure out how to do things and there's no documentation to support anything. This lack of documentation is seriously impeding uptake of this product in my opinion.

Finding a developer summit video where someone mentions halfway through the video that you do photo streaming either via raster field or blob field with "picture_<fieldname>" is not documentation, it's garbage. Seriously, I'm supposed to "guess" that if I name a blob field "picture_<fieldname>" the app will automagically know it's a picture!???

Also as for the 9.3.1 documentation regarding photos, then why is it in the "what's new" section I pointed out earlier "photo streaming" is listed, if that is the case then photo streaming was not available at 9.3.1 and thus the docs should not apply or be different?

Re: photo attachments for 10

AkhilParujanwala — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:26:46 GMT

Hi Akhil,
Finding a developer summit video where someone mentions halfway through the video that you do photo streaming either via raster field or blob field with "picture_<fieldname>" is not documentation, it's garbage. Seriously, I'm supposed to "guess" that if I name a blob field "picture_<fieldname>" the app will automagically know it's a picture!???

LOL this is so true, but yes, I find that with ArcGIS Mobile 10 seems to be more like trial and error, and yes I also had to figure out the extent thing with the mxd and then setting a initial extent in Project Center.

I have not found documentation about either, nor was I able to quickly find this information, all my developement with 10 has been trial and error.

For some reason I feel like ESRI just makes us work extra hard to figure out such little things, it also appears they don't want to spoon feed us the answers? Even though some of these things are new features that we want to use, but just don't know how. :confused:

Re: photo attachments for 10

MelindaFrost — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:03:15 GMT

I am with you all about the dismal documentation. I love when you still see code samples that are obviously for using 9.3.1 and yes- even 9.2. Seriously needs to be updated.
But the mobile team just started a blog and have some sample projects. The Picasa one deals with photos. I have not tried it yet but plan to.

http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/mobilecentral/Default.aspx

Re: photo attachments for 10

AkhilParujanwala — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:08:08 GMT

Thank you many of these items listed are things I definitely want to include!

Re: photo attachments for 10

JimMeuse — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:48:15 GMT

I also have an ArcGIS Mobile 10 application where I would like to attach more than one photograph. I tried adding two blob fields, "Picture_1" and "Picture_2" to the geodatabase. I can open up the ArcGIS Mobile 10 application and can browse for and add one photograph to each of the two blob fields, but the application crashes when I click the Finish button under Edit Attributes. I did note that the size of the MobileCache folder increases considerably.

So...is it possible or not to add two or more photos?

Re: photo attachments for 10

FrankRoberts — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:48:45 GMT

I thought I would tack a little more info onto this thread, since I was having similar issues.

Per my emails ESRI yesterday, apparently in in ArcGIS Mobile you cannot view attachments created by right clicking on a feature class, clicking "Attachments" and then clicking set and then saying "Create attachments" (via AC), in Version 10. (Side note: this is the only way to create attachments that are viewable in the FlexViewer) However, in version 10.1 these sort of attachments will be view-able using ArcGIS Mobile. In 10.1 I am told to do this you will need to:

1. Create GlobalID for your feature class in the database
2. Enable attachment for the feature layer
3. Create GlobalID for attachment feature class (Not the relationship class but the attachment class that�??s associated with the feature class)

Hope this helps someone else,

Re: photo attachments for 10

CiprianLazar — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 06:08:21 GMT

So, until ArcGIS 10.1, what is ESRI's recomandation for viewing in a web application (developed in Flex/Silverlight/Javascript API) photos uploaded in the field using an ArcGIS Mobile application?

Re: photo attachments for 10

JayChen — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:28:49 GMT

So, until ArcGIS 10.1, what is ESRI's recomandation for viewing in a web application (developed in Flex/Silverlight/Javascript API) photos uploaded in the field using an ArcGIS Mobile application?

At 10, you can customize flex viewer to show photos taken with Windows Mobile application that are stored in raster field. If you need sample code feel free to let me know.

Re: photo attachments for 10

CiprianLazar — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:40:20 GMT

At 10, you can customize flex viewer to show photos taken with Windows Mobile application that are stored in raster field. If you need sample code feel free to let me know.

Thank you for your quick reply.
I am developing a C# Silverlight application in which I would like to view photos taken with a custom Windows Mobile application. The photos are stored in a raster field. I managed to build my own WCF service which serves to the Silverlight client photos stored in a blob field (in an Oracle geodatabase), but I'm having difficulties retrieving photos stored in a raster field (because of the way they are stored in the database). I prefer raster field because it can be managed also from ArcMap as opposed to blob fields.
So if you please provide me with the sample code to get the photos from the raster field and show them in the Silverlight client.

Thank you.

Re: photo attachments for 10

NickDeMerchant — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:07:29 GMT

At 10, you can customize flex viewer to show photos taken with Windows Mobile application that are stored in raster field. If you need sample code feel free to let me know.

Hi Jay,

I would love to know how you got around this using flex with ArcGIS mobile 10. I am trying to view a raster field in flex. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nick