ROK Blog

Have any of my fellow GIS folks seen Zillow.com yet? I must say, its quite impressive. The map functions are pretty cool, using some AJax for the googlemaps effect and appear to be outputing the maps in a flash swf format, ala arcweb services. Pretty slick.

However, thats not the most impressive part. The amount of tax assesor data (mostly recent sales) they have amassed along with their estimated sales comps is pretty amazing. They basically assign a value to just about every residental structure and display it on the map. Lots of graphs and charts to look at, and its all quite easy to use. Check it out.

I thought that I would share with you the single best pieces of advice that you can get when loading rasters images into ArcSDE.

1. Use either ArcCatalog or Command Line, but not mix and match 2. If you are mosaicing, load the first image without pyramids and do not build statistics. Load all but one of the remaining ones without pyramids or statistics. Load the last one with pyramids and statistics checked. 3. Never, ever ever ever try to do the smart thing and load them in a big batch. That would be too simple. Instead load them in a maximum of 20 increments. Check back every 4 hours or so and repeat. 4. If you have the raw images (like tif's) load those instead of sids. They will load much quicker.

I seem to struggle with some issue or another every single tiime I try to load new images. These are my new rules to live by. They certainly are a pain, but it is nice when they are done.

I can't even remember how long that ArcMap server has been around. I do remember that it was so full of memory leaks that I vowed I would never use it.

Well, thats not entirely true. I did test it out once with one of my apps, and it worked ok. The problem was that I did way to many things with my AXL Requests that ArcMap server just didn't like. So, I cast it off, never to return. Until now.

I have a project coming starting that will be a fairly high volume site. It also needs really nice looking maps. So, I checked out one of those mxd's from the ESRI data and map cd's and it looks pretty darn good. Good enough to use in this app.

The good news is that there is absolutely nothing fancy about this application - at least nothing that would require any hardcore arcxml. Just a map and a few acetate layers.

So....Can anyone attest to the stability of ArcMap Server these days? Can I safely use it on a high volume site? Any input?

This one slipped under my radar. Not only is ArcSDE 9.1 service pack out...it also extends support for SQL Server 2005. While I have not done any testing with 2005, I hear its really quite impressive.

Here it is....ArcSDE 9.1 SP1

People that use ArcIMS know that we must have a servlet engine for it to work properly. This means that most folks folks either purchase ServletExec or struggle Tomcat. What most people don't realize is that Coldfusion is using JRUN as its own 'internal' servlet engine. So, why not save a step and use that with your ArcIMS configuration? Geez, you can almost purchase Coldfusion outright for what it costs to buy ServletExec.

So, here are the instructions to perform a ArcIMS install using Coldfusion's internal JRUN as your servlet engine. I have also tossed in some of the tricks to get the cfx_esrimap.dll tag registered with Coldfusion 7.

Browse to: \ArcIMS\Connectors\Servlet

Copy the com directory and the three files Esrimap_prop, ServletConnector_Res.properties and ServletConnector_Res_en_US.properties.

C. Paste them into the servlet location at: c:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\WEB-INF\classes

D. In a text editor; for example, Notepad, open: c:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\WEB-INF\classes\Esrimap_prop.

E. Edit appServerMachine=APPSMACHINE to point to the machine where the ArcIMS Application Server is installed; for example, change it to appServerMachine=mymachine or appServerMachine=IP. Change appServerClientPort=5300 only if a different port was selected.

F. Close and save the file.

G. In a text editor; for example, Notepad, open: c:\Program Files\ArcGIS\ArcIMS\Connectors\Servlet\Esrimap_prop and make the same changes that you did in step E. Save file.

H. Open up the CFMX administrator, and register the CFX_ESRIMAP.dllTag Name: cfx_esrimap Server Library: C:\CFusionMX7\runtime\bin\cfx_esrimap.dll Procedure: ProcessTagRequest

I. Edit C:\CFMX7\bin\jvm.config file

Change the java.library.path entry to include the two directories containing the ArcIMS shared libraries.

C:/Program Files/ArcGIS/ArcIMS/Middleware/CF_Connector/bin,C:/Program Files/ArcGIS/ArcIMS/Connectors/ColdFusion/Server

Change the java.class.path entry to include the one directory containing the ArcIMS Java classes.

C:/Program Files/ArcGIS/ArcIMS/Connectors/Servlet

Note that forward slashes are used even on Windows, and that the list is comma delimited.

Note that the java.library.path entry and the java.class.path entry are each a single long line.

Restart the CFMX Service from the windows control panel.