Latest Contributions by TimLangner

This would be very useful. However I can't see it happening any time soon, given the low number of +10 ratings. Only 48 people think it's worth rating as a good idea to impliment. ... View more

If using ArcGIS 10.1 or above, the following may do the job better: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00s800000037000000 However can't be certain of that as I currently can't run anything above ArcGIS 10 due to other legancy software. ... View more

If using ArcGIS 10.1 or above, the following may do the job better: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00s800000037000000 However can't be certain of that as I currently can't run anything above ArcGIS 10 due to other legancy software. ... View more

Thre is the following ESRI knowledge base article: http://support.esri.com/cn/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/24812 Slight problem in that it is VBA only. Fine if your still running ArcMap 10 or lower. Would have been good if they had updated it to Python or VBS. ... View more

Thre is the following ESRI knowledge base article: http://support.esri.com/cn/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/24812 Slight problem in that it is VBA only. Fine if your still running ArcMap 10 or lower. Would have been good if they had updated it to Python or VBS. ... View more

As someone who needs to add a table once in a blue moon, I doubt I'd be able to justify the additional expense of buying the production mapping extension, especially as I work in the public sector. The problem is when your not making a profit it's much harder to justify anything beyond the basics. There's a tendancy to make do. In the mean time I just criticise ESRI's ArcGIS  for not being that good, even though ESRI's add on might be fantastic and resolve some of the problems I encounter. As a result I then pass on negative throughts to others I meet about my expariences of the ESRI ArcGIS software. I doubt there's much that be done. ESRI need to make money and the public sector need to spend less. ... View more

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. 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. 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. Then a support analyst decides the solution is to simply provide a better error message. We need a solution to the problem rather than just a more helpful error message. To their credit, it was actually one of the ESRI UK support analysts who found this thread and forwarded the link onto us. Tim,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. That could be really helpful. I wasn't aware metadata could be created for layer files. ... View more

Thanks for replying. That makes perfect sense now. I don't think the documentation is as clear on this, unless I have missed something. Perhaps ESRI need to put a similar explanation in the documentation. One of the help pages states the following: [h=2]"Stand-alone metadata XML filesSome ArcGIS items don't support creating metadata to describe them. Other GIS resources aren't handled by ArcGIS at all. Nevertheless, you can create detailed descriptions for these resources by adding information to stand-alone metadata XML files using the Description tab." (http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/index.html#//016w0000005s000000) However it doesn't state which ArcGIS items and nor does it expand upon the term other GIS resources. All it needs is a few examples or although in the case of ArcGIS items, I think it would be worth listing them all as that is directly related to ArcGIS itself, which ESRI make. ... View more

Hi there I started another thread on this, unaware this one existed. The problem exists in 10.2/10.2.1 Can anyone tell me if it is not good practice to have metadata on database views and if so please explain why? We reported a bug to ESRI UK and this eventually resulted in an American ESRI support analyst logging a feature enhancement for the error message displayed to be more helpful. This isn't the solution we were looking for. Personally I'd rather the problem was fixed. As it is a feature enhancement it isn't possible to search for those online. However the bug number is: NIM098090 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. 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? Th other thread can be found at: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/101034-Bug-NIM098090-when-creating-spaital-views-in-ArcGIS-10.2-using-ArcCatalog?p=359361&posted=1#post359361 ... View more

The reason the bug isn't viable is because it's been logged as enhancement. It's a bug not an enhancement request we submitted. Apparently the fix is to correct the error message that is displayed and it is possible it will be fixed in the next service pack but they don't have date for that. In addition ESRI do not see why metadata would be required for database views when the original data would contain metadata. Can someone with experience of databases and metadata tell me if it is not good logic to create metadata for database views? We were only doing this because we wanted to publish a subset of data for INSPIRE Directive. We don't wish to publish all the data and even if we did, some of the data covers multiple themes and we believe we need to publish each theme separately. Are ESRI correct in what they say? Is there another way of doing this that would be more logical? We can create separate layers but that means a duplication of the data itself, which surely isn't good practice either? What is best practice in such cases as this? Personally I would rather they fixed the problem than provide an error message. Tim ... View more

We don't have the ArcGIS for INSPIRE extension but we do have the UK Productivity Suite extension which allows us to create GEMINI standard metadata. I'm hoping we can also publish INSPIRE standard WMS and WFS services without having to buy the INSPIRE extension as we already have the capability in ArcGIS Server to publish WFS 1.0... we just need the 2.0 standard to be adopted in the core product. Someone from ESRI UK has also confirmed to a colleague that you can use Productivity Suite extension. It's not widely promoted as far as I can tell but I guess ESRI want users to spend more money without thinking, aka the INSPIRE extension. Thankfully I actually do stop and look into these things, rather than just throwing money at something straight away. ... View more