Event Layer or Query Layer support

[MarcBate]

I'm a desktop ArcObjects developer thinking about offering a solution for ArcGIS Explorer as well.  With the .NET Explorer API how can I best add a layer to the map given an ADO.NET dataview with xy coordinate columns?    I don't see traditional XY Event Layer support, but was wondering if there will be something in 1500 similar to the ArcGIS 10 Query Layers that use RBDMS spatial types for mapping SQL Server or Oracle data.    I could write to a shapefile, but I don't like the field names being trimmed to 10 characters.   What about the status of the file GDB API?  Is that only C++?

[MichaelBranscomb]

Marc,

ArcGIS Explorer is primarily intended as a consuming / sharing application and therefore the local data creation abilities in the API were deliberately restricted. However - in the imminent 1500 release there are some excellent new sharing capabilities in the UI. The way to programmatically create content in ArcGIS Explorer from a source such as ADO.NET is via Notes (persisted in the map) or Graphics (NOT persisted in the map). Notes can be arranged in folders and will appear in the Contents window.

If you have an ArcGIS Server 10.0 accessible then you could create a layer in a Geodatabase on the server, publish a map service with feature access enabled and edit the contents via the feature service. ArcGIS Explorer could then stream this content back via the map service (you would need to clear the local map cache after any edits to the service).

You could use one of the available Shapefile libraries available on the web but I would probably only recommend this as a last resort. The File GDB API is due for release in the months after 10.0.

Regards

Mike

[MarcBate]

It would be nice to have a sort of binding adapter similar to what you have for geodatabase and dBase tables but for an ADO.NET datatable so you can map points when using the .NET SDK in ArcGIS Explorer without requiring ArcGIS Server.  We have a desktop and server solution for our more advanced GIS users, but wanted to explore the feasibility of using ArcGIS Explorer for our more casual users, but the main thing our add-in would do is allow users to query our db with the same UI we have in .NET used by our desktop & server solutions, and then add the results to the map.   We already have routines to convert ADO.NET dataview to a shapefile, so I guess that would be the way we'd have to go for now.