2006 ESRI Developer's Conference
As most of you know the inaugural ESRI Developer’s Conference took place this last Friday and Saturday (March 17th and 18th). I sit here 5 days later still trying to form the multitude of sessions, new contacts, new Arc info (as you might say), and various other memories into some semblance of a coherent overview of “take away” items from the conference. I find myself a little lifted each time I think of the general energy level surrounding the opening morning plenary on Friday and the buzz of people around the ESRI DC Community Center. Over 700 developers and ESRI staff (I never was sure if the staff was included in the attendance figures) filed into the largest hall at the Palm Springs Convention Center to hear Scott Morehouse kick things off. Brian Golden, head of EDN, introduced Jack Dangermond who gave a short introduction for Mr. Morehouse, ESRI’s director of research and development, and a very “buzz-worthy” presentation about the direction of the ESRI platform with the 9.2 release and beyond followed.
Within the first hour of the opening session I was itching to get back to Birmingham and find that extra research time of my own to look into all of the great new features in 9.2. Morehouse took the approach of championing the geodatabase model, pushing for coarse-grained development approaches and service oriented architectures, and finishing with a promise that ESRI is committed to enhanced support and documentation with new releases. Some of this seemed like fluff and hidden agendas; however, as they pulled out all guns (demos) I assume the majority of the conference attendees were impressed, I know I was. At least 3 things that had been on my mind for the last few months were answered in just one quick demo. I mean quick, I don’t know if they were trying to just keep the wow factor high or if there was a little need for slight of hand in this demo, but in under a minute each demo was navigated through flawlessly. Back to the three things, enhanced ArcGIS Server editing, seamless panning and zooming, and incorporation of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And Xml) for more client-side processing of tasks within the browser.
When I was first hired at my current position, I had asked about Google Maps and seamless panning, I was told Google was a bit of a four letter word around ESRI. So I guess we were expecting seamless panning and zooming as a necessary public relations response to Google and other web mapping technologies. One thing I still find funny is that these same features are not included in the Beta release of 9.2 desktop that we received. I think we all tend to make the assumption that if no one has complained about something then it is quite possibly best left alone. That’s how companies grow stagnant and eventually atrophy. Just because GIS professional’s the world over have never en masse asked for this feature in ArcMap does not mean it’s not a great idea. With today’s machines, the overhead of caching a few extra frames around the border of the drawn map area is little in comparison to the enhanced user experience with seamless panning. (Just my two cents)
The demos at the plenary session proved to me that the editing ideas I had been shaping in my head were already reality on the desktops of some at ESRI. This was a welcome relief to know that this particular “wheel” heavy in Javascript and custom GIS Server parameter arguments would not have to be re-invented.
There were a number of fashionable words flying around the developer’s conference from “coarse-grained objects” to “SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)” but the one that caught my attention most from the start was AJAX. Developing the majority of the time in the web server realm, I have come to appreciate the nuances and needs of the disconnected application as it were. I have a strong appreciation for the need to balance processing between both client and server. AJAX is not a panacea and it is not really anything new. It’s just a way of taking a lot of the old javascript tricks that have been developed in the last decade and packaging them in a standard form. Hooray AJAX!
The overall strategy for ArcGIS Server 9.2 is to have much more out-of-the-box functionality and for that I give a belated round of applause to ESRI.Nearly two pages into my “overview” and I’ve barely covered just a portion of the 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. opening session.
Within the first hour of the opening session I was itching to get back to Birmingham and find that extra research time of my own to look into all of the great new features in 9.2. Morehouse took the approach of championing the geodatabase model, pushing for coarse-grained development approaches and service oriented architectures, and finishing with a promise that ESRI is committed to enhanced support and documentation with new releases. Some of this seemed like fluff and hidden agendas; however, as they pulled out all guns (demos) I assume the majority of the conference attendees were impressed, I know I was. At least 3 things that had been on my mind for the last few months were answered in just one quick demo. I mean quick, I don’t know if they were trying to just keep the wow factor high or if there was a little need for slight of hand in this demo, but in under a minute each demo was navigated through flawlessly. Back to the three things, enhanced ArcGIS Server editing, seamless panning and zooming, and incorporation of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And Xml) for more client-side processing of tasks within the browser.
When I was first hired at my current position, I had asked about Google Maps and seamless panning, I was told Google was a bit of a four letter word around ESRI. So I guess we were expecting seamless panning and zooming as a necessary public relations response to Google and other web mapping technologies. One thing I still find funny is that these same features are not included in the Beta release of 9.2 desktop that we received. I think we all tend to make the assumption that if no one has complained about something then it is quite possibly best left alone. That’s how companies grow stagnant and eventually atrophy. Just because GIS professional’s the world over have never en masse asked for this feature in ArcMap does not mean it’s not a great idea. With today’s machines, the overhead of caching a few extra frames around the border of the drawn map area is little in comparison to the enhanced user experience with seamless panning. (Just my two cents)
The demos at the plenary session proved to me that the editing ideas I had been shaping in my head were already reality on the desktops of some at ESRI. This was a welcome relief to know that this particular “wheel” heavy in Javascript and custom GIS Server parameter arguments would not have to be re-invented.
There were a number of fashionable words flying around the developer’s conference from “coarse-grained objects” to “SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)” but the one that caught my attention most from the start was AJAX. Developing the majority of the time in the web server realm, I have come to appreciate the nuances and needs of the disconnected application as it were. I have a strong appreciation for the need to balance processing between both client and server. AJAX is not a panacea and it is not really anything new. It’s just a way of taking a lot of the old javascript tricks that have been developed in the last decade and packaging them in a standard form. Hooray AJAX!
The overall strategy for ArcGIS Server 9.2 is to have much more out-of-the-box functionality and for that I give a belated round of applause to ESRI.Nearly two pages into my “overview” and I’ve barely covered just a portion of the 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. opening session.
posted by Matt Petre at 10:57 AM
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