Latest Contributions by MarcoBoeringa

we are planning to update our enterprise SQL Server system, currently our SQL Server is 2008,  since SQL Server 2014 is going to be released soon,  we are suggested that it  would be better to update SQL Server to 2014 instead of 2012. We wonder when ESRI ArcSDE will support MS SQL Server 1014. Thanks !! I am not an ESRI employee, so can't tell you that. However, I think you should consider the following: - ESRI will undoubtedly need to do some extensive testing and possibly application development before certifying / supporting the new version officially. This may also mean having to wait for the next .x release of ArcGIS / ArcSDE, which again may take considerable time. Can you actually wait that long before abolishing SQL Server 2008, do you have a fixed "latest date" planned for an upgrade? If so, you'll have to go with 2012... - Are you actually in need of any of the new functionalities of SQL Server 2014, and do you have the hardware to take advantage of it? Looking at the Microsoft pages, the "in-memory" capabilities are boasted for OLTP and data warehousing, but do you need this and can your hardware platform actually deal with this? What edition of SQL Server are you actually going to run? If your edition doesn't even support these kind of things, there is no use in the immediate upgrade to 2014... - You may actually prefer to stay one version below the "latest", as the major bugs will have been ironed out through service packs or hotfixes. - A last remark: even if 2014 is supported as database platform some time in the future, it may still mean ArcGIS may not be able to take advantage of some of the new features. This all depends on what these features are and how easy or desirable it is for ESRI to start making use of them in the software, and the amount of development required and customer demands... Since I don't have a crystal ball, and neither do the folks at ESRI, it will take time for this to settle and start influencing developments of the ArcGIS platform. ... View more

Hi Kaushal, I think the problem is that these "default values" are only applicable within the scope of the geodatabase, that is, software by ESRI that is aware of the geodatabase concept, like ArcGIS. If you use other software to update these fields, they are probably not able to use / don't "see" the default values, as these are stored in the ArcSDE / Geodatabase system tables that are ignored / inaccessible by the other software. You may need to define defaults at the database level instead of through setting them in ArcGIS, or have some database triggers on your table to automatically set Null values to a default. ... View more

Few fields I have not mapped. These fields were having default values, but when the append tool runs and the new records are created, the default values does not appear in the new records. When I insert a new record directly to the target table(feature class) using arc editor of arcmap 10.0, I can see the default values being inserted along with my manually entered field values. Any suggestion at the earliest will be highly appreciated. Is it an ESRI bug of the tool. Hi Kaushal, I doubt this is a bug, I think it is by "design". I doubt also if everyone would like to have their fields automatically filled up by default values. Sometimes, values in a field need to stay null, even if you set a default value for a field. While you have the desire to have them filled in with defaults automatically, I think ESRI could only sensibly provide a user selectable option for this, for example via the Geoprocessing Environment settings. The easiest "workaround" for default values not being applied to the results of the Append tool, is to calculate them using the Calculate tool after the Append. Select the Null values, and than perform the calculation on the selected records only to set the appropriate values. ... View more

It is probably unrelated, but for what it is worth, there is at least one specific ArcGIS for Server 10.2.1 patch already available with an incomplete issue description: ArcGIS 10.2.1 for Server Data License Compatibility Patch I also see one reference in the Help to being unable to login to a Portal website after migration to 10.2.1: I can't log in to the portal website after installing Portal for ArcGIS 10.2.1. What do I do? There is also a NIM Bug reference to this proxy error related to having a link to the Geocoding services: Bug NIM-098003 - ArcMap returns the following error, "Error: Proxy server got a bad address from remote server (verify the server is running)" when trying to connect to the ArcGIS Online Geocoding Service using http://geocode.arcgis.com/ArcGIS/services. Lastly, I see a "Migration checklist" in the 10.2.1 Server Help for services from before 10.0. While this is not your case, there may be some reminders here of things to check after an upgrade: Migration checklist Also see the main page: What to expect when migrating to ArcGIS 10.2.1 for Server that actually says: "ArcGIS 10.2.1 for Server is very similar in architecture and appearance to version 10.2, and can even be applied without uninstalling 10.2. Your services and applications should migrate seamlessly between 10.2 and 10.2.1." Well... not in your case. ... View more

What is really needed is some tool to check the integrity of the database. The Pre-Requisite Check is the closest we get. The main problem is that you cannot run it on the current version �?? it just say the version is up to date. It will be very useful to get such a tool for regular check of the database, not only when you upgrade. I agree that if the pre check works without any errors it does not mean necessary that the upgrade will work. check this: http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=08730000000bmXSAAY#comments Hi Mody, Hmmm... In terms of the need for such a tool, I think it speaks volumes that out of the millions of ESRI users out there, it is actually two ESRI support employees (from Germany and the Netherlands) that are the first to respond to the above linked Idea, stressing its urgent need... ... View more

I have a map depicting 500 points in a city. I need to create one layout per point, showing each point at the center of the layout, and all the other points that lie within a particular distance of the central point.  The desired output format is a set of 500 distributable files that can be printed by an average computer user (pdf, png, jpg, etc...). What's the best strategy for a project like this? You should be looking at the Data Driven Pages functionality of ArcMap. At least, I assume you are using ArcMap and not some web app. It will allow you to automatically output all of your points as separate PDFs or some image format. Set the Data Driven Pages index to your point Feature Class (it is not required to be polygons, despite the examples in the page linked below), or alternatively a buffer around each point: See: What are Data Driven Pages? ... View more

i understand your point, and i know what the tool is currently doing. However, when you are preparing for production upgrade some errors are not easily fixed and requires furhter troublesooting and could stop your upgrade. this is why before i perform the actual upgrade in production, i take a copy of production to a sandbox machine to simulate the upgrade. what i am purposing is "enhancing the capiblities of the tool"..... I think you may need to post this on ArcGIS Ideas, instead of here. It is likely there is already a similar Idea there, so you could vote it up, otherwise, create a new one. Link the Idea here in this thread so users can find it more easily. I think the "enhancing" is not limited to geodatabase upgrades, there are other tools in ArcGIS that could use more thorough error / condition checking, and / or much better error feedback, e.g. think of ModelBuilder. It is frustrating to get cryptic messages that don't even hint on a proper source of an issue. Anyway, it seems you are already following best practices by testing the upgrade against a copy of production. Even if ESRI enhanced the prerequisites tool, you probably still don't want to rely on it to upgrade in-situ... ... View more

Emad, You raise a good question. The Help is not very clear, at least, I don't understand this sentence: "Allows the creation of a map member function for the ST_Geometry type, which is called whenever a spatial union or intersection is performed." This leaves me puzzled. To be honest, I am not an Oracle expert, so I had to look up what the "map member function" is, I found the below linked Oracle Help page and the section / headline "Map Methods" therein, most useful. It seems Map Methods are special cases of sorting functions, that allow you to define a custom method of sorting, as in the example in this page based on an area calculation of a geometry: Basic Components of Oracle Objects I am not entirely sure how this relates to the "spatial union or intersection" operations as listed in the ArcGIS Help? It is all a bit "cryptic" :eek: Anyway, real data should never be owned by the SDE account in your database, as Vince has stressed a dozen times here on the Forums, and this may be another reason. If the SDE account doesn't have privileges on real data, the decrypting privileges probably are "harmless"... The NSA can probably decrypt everything, but if you pull the plug of your internet connection, I don't think they will have much to explore. 😉 ... View more

I clicked on the link for map automation downloads, but I don't see any content.  The attached JPG is a screenshot of what I see. Jon, I already wrote this in post 3 of this thread, click the "Show ArcGIS Desktop items" checkbox in the lower left corner of the page. Without this selected, nothing will be shown, even if you selected "All Content"... ... View more

I guess the issue we found was that we were trying to achieve something that was possible in the past, via a different way of working. Very true, and the bold and underlined text is significant in this context. I guess the issue we found was that we were trying to achieve something that was possible in the past, via a different way of working. ESRI then decide they were prefer us not to use the existing way of working and stated they were going to remove it. So we switch our way of working and find we can't do what we previously were able to do. We have an ObjectID with our spatial views. First of: The ArcSDE Command Line tools aren't retired yet. You can still use them at 10.2(.1) if you need them, but you are encouraged and adviced to look for other options by ESRI. They will, however, be retired soon, but hopefully, ESRI will come up with a solution for the specific "metadata" issue before they do (as Kimberly hinted on). Anyway, while you may feel ESRI is limiting you, ESRI actually opened up a whole new world to us: being able to easily create both native, and persisted, database views in an RDBMS that aren't entangled with the ArcSDE / Geodatabase repository (of course, if the database view is based on an geodatabase Feature Class, there still is some dependency), and the ability to add layers based on standard SQL via Query Layers, all straight from the ArcGIS for Desktop user interface. That is a big bonus to the new 10.x versions of ArcGIS. Many people have wanted this functionality for a long time. This bonus comes at a price though: you are no longer working within the scope of the geodatabase. This means several limitations, since the RDMBS database is not "geodatabase aware", even if you use layers from a geodatabase as the basis for the database views! This is because you are accessing the database not through ArcObjects classes designed for geodatabase access, which incorporate the intelligence to use the full geodatabase functionality in their code, but through other classes that deal with standard ODBC / database client connections. The limitations are therefore (not a complete list): - No awareness of complex datasets or geodatabase features like "Feature Datasets", "Geometric Networks", "Topologies", "Parcel Fabrics" and so on. - No standard support for metadata on data layers - No automatic translation of domain "codes" to human readable domain "descriptions" - No knowledge of feature type (point, line, polygon) until dataset is accessed, because this is not registered in the ArcSDE / Geodatabase Repository, hence dataset must be selected in ArcCatalog before it shows its proper icon. ... View more

Can anyone tell me if it is not good practice to have metadata on database views and if so please explain why? Tim, Good you managed to dig up this thread yourself, I just looked over it... Of course it is good practice to add metadata to (subsets of) your data. The things I wrote in the other thread are merely to explain to you that there is a technical issue here, that is not a bug, but requires a potential enhancement to allow storage of metadata with spatial database views. The support analyst�??s comments were that it does not make much sense to create meta data for a view when one would have the metadata for the original data source I don't agree, I think you have a legit desire, but that doesn't make it a fault of ESRI or bug in the ArcGIS for Desktop application. It is a matter of choice in where to put development effort in, and if there is a need, than ESRI is likely to full fill it at some point, see Kimberly Peter's remark. The functionality for creating database views from within ArcGIS for Desktop is relatively new, keep that in mind also. If that is the case what is the best practice when you need to publish a subset of data, complete with its own metadata and you�??d rather not duplicate your original database tables, to avoid redundancy in your database. We are currently in the process of publishing data until our obligations to do use under the EU INSPIRE Directive. However some of our database tables cover multiple INSPIRE Themes so we need to create views of the data. Clearly the metadata has to reflect what we are publishing, rather than what the original database contains. Besides, if we publish a view, how can we publish the metadata if the view doesn't contain any?[/URL] I don't know if this is a real solution to your issue, but you might consider setting Definition Queries on your layers in ArcMap that need to be published, and save them out as stand alone layer files (*.lyr) outside the ArcMap document. You can than use ArcCatalog to create metadata for this specific layer file, which will be stored as a separate XML file next to your layer file in the folder where you stored it. Additionally, you can limit the number of visible fields in the layer properties. ... View more

Actually, this issue is not so much a bug, but an enhancement request. By using spatial views, you are essentially working outside the scope of ESRI's geodatabase concept. Since RDBMSs still do not natively support storing ISO XML metadata for geographical data in some standardized way, it means no metadata can be stored "just like that"... The ArcSDE command line tools overcame this, by sort of a "hack", that is, registering your layer behind the scene in the appropriate ArcSDE system tables so that you could use ArcCatalog to create or access the associated metadata. ESRI is already aware of the issue you raised and looking for solutions, I have seen a recent thread about this with remarks by an ESRI employee that stated something like "that this issue would be tackled before the command line tools were retired"... Unfortunately, I can't find the thread at the moment, so can't point you there now. (EDIT: it is here) This issue is also bit similar to the reason why spatial views do not show geodatabase domain descriptions, but only show the coded value of the domain. See this discussion and a workaround I suggested for this specific issue: Database View Shows Coded Value, not Human Readable? In addition, you may find this thread interesting: Empty ArcSDE spatial view not being recognized ... View more

I am not entirely sure. I only used ExportToJPEG on Page Layouts, where I didn't need to set the width and height. I guess the issue may be with using width and height values not conforming to the ratio of width / height of your visible data frame in ArcMap, and ArcGIS trying to squeeze the display of the data frame in the changed image aspect. E.g. if the data frame in ArcMap has a width / height size of 640 / 480, so a 4:3 ratio, you may need to use a similar ratio for the export width / height too, e.g. 1600 / 1200. But this is a guess... someone with more Python experience will probably answer your question better. ... View more

Maybe you should also have a look at ESRI's ArcGIS Schematics product. It allows you to represent your network both schematically as well as geographically. See here: ArcGIS Schematics And especially the pages on Key Features: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/extensions/schematics/key-features ... View more