Latest Contributions by RonnieRichards

I agree with the author that the explorer folder shortcut type should be recognized. As an educator with students in front of ArcGIS they get confused in the various dialogs. in ArcMap the open map dialog is much different from the rest of Add Data, Toolbox choose workspace (folder) dialogs and the folder connections concept.  A map dialog can browser ANY location Windows Explorer supports .lnk, direct UNC entry.  Add Data only uses Folder Connections which has a purpose but cannot replace folder links which can be grouped and named unlike folder connections.  When overloading ArcCatalog with Folder Connections (20+) , most of which are UNC pathes for some reason my ArcCatalog runs much slower when . Windows Explorer never has this problem browsing to locations so maybe performance could be another reason to support explorer shortcuts. ... View more

You might consider the Atteribute Assistant Add-In it has an ID Generator function which is quite flexible. The Attribute Assistant is not the easiest add-in to find... typically it is bundled with the LocalGovernment sample templates.  I wish we could have unique indexes on columns in our versioned data because what prevents you or another user duplicating the ID using the existing workflow? However this is another issue that has been around for a while and also exists as an arcgis idea...  ... View more

We too are having problems updating the data behind a hosted feature service using the overwrite existing service option. We have been struggling with this for months and the only work-a-round we found was to delete the service and republish as others suggested on this thread. We use SDE for all of our data sources before they go out to feature services. There does not seem to be a way to automate the "Data" side to all of this. The delete and append features tool do not appear to work against service url's. I wish we could just use gdb replication or better yet simply dropping a FGDB out on AGOL org. ... View more

Ok in concept that might be possible but both templates do not approach the application the same way. They appear to have different authors. If you expect users to be obtain code and inject code from other templates the application approach, configuration and setup of the templates needs to be identical. Something I have yet to see between any of them. Also recently the basic_viewer no longer appears to support being hosted outside of AGOL. Today I downloaded the basic viewer and legend and the basic viewer is throwing errors when not being hosted by AGOL. This template comes up with 404 errors and it seems to happen in this section of app.js. But if you look at Legend it does not even contain an app.js. again different authors is not going to allow users to reuse template code with easse. line 52 (app.js)          //Check to see if the app is hosted on arcgis.com. If the app is hosted then set the arcgisUrl to the proper environment (dev, qa, production).               //Also set the proxy to the Arcgis.com proxy.               //If the app isn't hosted or the user has specified a proxy url or geometry service url then use the user-defined values ... View more

I agree SDE Connections need to be improved. The current procedure is difficult and does not work well for many reasons as the author explains. Why not create a data source connection manager in the MXD where we can manage the various data sources including multiple sde connections? Many will say to use the Data Source manager tool in ArcCatalog by right clicking on the .mxd but even this tool does not work properly in 10.1. It has been around since 9.3 and still does not deal with SDE connections correctly.   I did author a tool years ago that might help you. Several users have emailed me they use my tool to break their mxd's and fix the sources in the new mxd which is much easier than repathing. Unfortunately you would need to wait for the mxd to open to repath your data...  http://resources.arcgis.com/gallery/file/geoprocessing/details?entryID=56FA061F-1422-2418-A076-D0B56BCD8745 ... View more

Please do this especially since the register geodatabase option in ArcGIS Server 10.1 ONLY supports .sde connection files! So it seems SDE Workgroup users have to create .sde connections now anyways . As the author suggests this is rundant and a confusing process for new sde users.  ... View more

Please also improve this situation in Arcpy. I wish would also report a schema lock but instead it reports it cannot create the output feature class or table. Even with overwriteoutput = true there are times when a single user environment creates schema locks and arcpy does not report the correct error. Instead we start chasing down overwriteoutput options when it is not the real issue or cause of the error.   ... View more

I do not recall when overWriteouput was introduced but you might be able to simply place this at the top of your script. This environment setting allows overwriting existing outputs. http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?TopicName=OverwriteOutput%20method If that does not exist in 9.1, you might be able to use the Delete command and then when you recreate the feature class has already been deleted? Hope this helps Ron ... View more

Agree. We all implement relational databases for a reason... You should see te faces of the database managers when I explain their relational database with normalized tables does not benefit the geodatabase much as we have to build tools to convert and maintain domain tables using toolboxes yet even these are lacking useful tools such as sort or reorder values. The geodatabase should use more relational design for its functionality. This might the same as this idea here, so make sure you vote for both. https://community.esri.com/ideas/1781 ... View more

It would be great if one could edit multiple fields for selected features in a single editing process. Right now the workflow seems to be right clicking on each column and performing a calculate several time. This is a slow workflow especially when loading expressions and having to switch the expression language each time in the calculate window since it does not remember the last settings. One way to accomplish this would be to allow the editor the option to select a number of fields to perform edits to. Very simple custom edit forms that supported domains and expressions...  Then when ready to edit click a simple button which opens a simple form which would allow static values, domains and expressions to be entered for each field. This way the editor simply fills out the form and clicks "apply" and all of the affected attributes would be updated for the selection set in a single edit action. Right now the fastest tool to do this is Attribute Transfer tool but it does not allow expressions and requires clicking to each feature which needs attributes applied. ... View more

Yes please make it so. It is ridiculous to deal with domain management tools or add ins to perform the simplest of tasks... (sort domains) Better yet provide a command that creates a view thereby allowing the admin to sort the view as desired.  It is a really fun having to explain to an Applications Manager who knows nothing about ArcGIS that their highly normalized database will have to be redundantly converted into the geodatabase using properietary arctoolbox/arcpy commands.  Domains as tables or views just makes sense and fits into the majority of the database world.  ... View more