Latest Contributions by berniejconnors

UPDATE - when I wrote this yesterday I was not aware that the Measurement widget uses a geodesic method to calcualte distances.  Therefore we do not have to worry about Web Mercator distorting measurements.  But I still believe this Idea is valid for applications that require planar measurements on a local coordinate system instead of geodesic measurements on the ellipsoid.  The WAB Measurement widget documentation should be updated to clearly state that measurements are geodesic and are not influenced by Web Mercator distortions. ---------------------------------------------------------- Way back in 2010 when Esri adopted Web Mercator for all the Esri published basemaps they warned us not to make measurements with the Web Mercator coordinate system: If you use the new ArcGIS Online services, avoid the temptation to perform measurements of polylines and polygons in Web Mercator. Esri also gave us a work-a-round with sample code: Fortunately, you don’t have to perform your measurements in the same coordinate system used by the map. When a user submits a geometry to your application for measurement, you can re-project that geometry into a more appropriate coordinate system for measurement. The re-projected geometry is used internally for measurement only; you don’t display it on the map. Once the measurement is complete, you return the correct result to the user. My proposal for this "Idea" is to allow the Measurement widget and the Draw widget (or any OOTB WAB widget that performs a measurement) to be configured with an alternate coordinate system that will be used to calculate the distance and area measurements.  The widget would default to the coordinate system of the basemap geodesic calculations for distance and area.  But if an alternate coordinate system is provided in the widget config the geometry submitted by the user will be reprojected to the alternate coordinate system before distance, area, or direction calculations are performed. ... View more

I am tired of squinting at the small text and small icons on the "Manage Services" page (/arcgis/manager/index.html) in ArcGIS Server Manager.  I frequently scan this page to identify services that are "stopped" or "started".  This would be much easier if there was a big red octagon symbol adjacent to the stopped services: When was the last time a UI designer looked at this page?  It really hasn't changed much in more than a decade. ... View more

                Our IT services has deployed anti-ransomeware software (ARS).  ARS is an important tool to help protect our data from ransomware attacks.  The government of PEI was recently hit with a ransomware attack in February 2020.    On April 7 th  ARS was deployed on our network storage. Our data store, config store, file geodatabases and raster tile caches are stored on our network storage.  Coincidentally, we have noticed stability issues with the our ArcGIS servers through most of April.  On April 30 th the network storage team helped us identify a pattern that showed stability issues with the our ArcGIS Servers that coincided with the dates and times of events logged by the ARS software.    Before I continue let me strongly state “There has NOT been a ransomware attack on our ArcGIS servers.”   We believe that normal ArcGIS Server operations might mimic ransomware activity.  This triggers the ARS software to log an event and then begin to take snapshots of our files on the network storage servers.  We suspect the snapshotting may be interfering with the normal operation of ArcGIS Server.  Some of our users have reported failed map service requests and we have witnessed missing raster map tiles in our tile cached basemaps.   Since April 30 th the Isilon server team has disabled the ARS snapshotting activity for our storage space on the network servers.  This appears to have improved the stability of our ArcGIS servers but we are continuing to closely monitor for problems.   If ARS has been deployed on your storage servers and you are having stability issues with ArcGIS Server you should dig a little deeper.  Have the ARS logs reviewed to see if they mention the ArcGIS Server admin account and see if the dates and times in the logs coincide with dates and time of ArcGIS Server problems.  Good luck! ... View more