What next? ...further developments in GIS

26 June 2001
The arrival of ArcGIS makes it necessary to consider both the upgrade path (and eventual deployment of ArcView in that form) and the broader issues of how to integrate the management of GIS data and projects into library and computing organizational structures and procedures. There are immediate problems, middle-run problems, eventual problems... all needing attention

Item: ArcSDE promises to help in the management of coverages, .shp files, data sources, but it requires Microsoft SQL Server (or one of the other heavy-lifting RDBMs). We think that SQL Server is on the way, somehow, perhaps via Computer Science. "You use ArcGIS Desktop with ArcSDE to implement your database design, specify feature behavior, add and edit geobase contents, and manage geodatabases in a multiuser setting."  This really implies a GIS Data Manager, somebody who comprehends all of the pieces, hard and soft and data.

Item: ArcGIS requires NT or Windows2000; Skip has procured a 2000 machine to try it out, partly set up in one of the Science Library's study rooms.

Item: ArcGIS requires a License Manager on the network, but it's unclear to me how this gets set up or managed... Tom Ahnemann is probably the only person who has whatever the requisite 'keycodes' are (--and it turned out that he didn't. I requested them from ESRI, using the form at www.myesri.com, for both of the Customer Numbers we have).

Item: ArcIMS will eventually be linked to ArcSDE; it's unclear to me at the moment what the network implications are --where each component resides, how much complication drive-letter mapping creates in setup and execution...

In a typical configuration, an ArcSDE application server resides with your RDB on a server platform. The ArcSDE application server performs spatial searches and sends data that meets the search criteria to the client... The computer network connects many clients to the server...
Item: ArcSDE for Coverages is a read-only implementation for .shp (and ArcINFO coverages), "unlicensed and provided free of charge with each ArcGIS and ArcIMS release... an inexpensive way to begin working with ArcSDE technology..." (I've printed the Manual)

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Chris Connors says that the ArcINFO license ($3000/yr) should have been paid by now, and that we should be figuring out how to regularize that --to insure that we retain it, since it's lost if it lapses.

28 June
A summary of another way of thinking about what we need, from a message I sent to Pat Shoknecht in the context of James River collaboration:
We probably need to think more about just what it is we'd like Wayne to do, what resources ACS has or might-could get that would make a real difference to carrying out the scheme we're evolving. Certainly we'd like to have subsidy of face-to-face working group meetings involving collaborating faculty and staff at Richmond and W&L, and there's yet-to-be-defined GIS support (which might include $$ for ESRI training, and perhaps for purchase of data and imagery for specific parts of the project --though a lot of both is freely available but needs to be gathered together and/or made accessible in formats compatible with ArcView).

Seems like there's a quantum of geodata that, once established and made available to users, will both support and inspire the people whom we're trying to attract to the enterprise. WE have to build that quantum, and http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/jamesriver/ is the barest beginning. It's not difficult to define other elements we need to add to the catalog: topography (a matter of gathering and stitching together a lot of DEMs, and likewise the relevant topographic quads), remote sensing imagery (DOQQs from http://www.runet.edu:8800/~geoserve/main_doqq.htm and satellite imagery from various sources), 2000 TIGER data, historical census data for the ... and so on. The immediate problem with such data and imagery is WHERE to put it (viz: on FTP servers? ....or just point to where it's stored and served at RAdford or UVa?) and how to make it both accessible and useful to potential users (what kinds of index maps, and other user guides so that people can find what they need). Just whose job is it to amass and catalog and distribute and manage such basic requisites for effective GIS-based work? <==and THAT's the crux of the dilemma in disseminating GIS. Is it even possible to share such development between two or more campuses? Or (more to the point) what does it really TAKE to do that kind of sharing?

These are some of the issues I'm hoping to gain some clarity on at the ESRI User Conference, in the broad context of liberal arts colleges, and in the specific setting of collaborations such as that we're hoping to foment for the James River. There is a considerable danger that we're pioneering with something that our intended users don't need or want and won't use, unless we manage to make it inevitable and irresistable to them, AND provide them with the support they need to embrace the inevitable and irresistable. It's a tall order...

29 June
I was not able to find out definitively whether our ESRI license(s) for the next year have been paid. Tom A. was going to contact ESRI to clarify, but the finer points are unclear. Is (as Tom thinks) the $3000 for ArcINFO an annual maintenance fee for a "free" single seat, part of the deal that got us a site license for ArcView for $10,000? Does Geology pay that $3000, and if so how and who handles it? Should ArcINFO 8.1 be installed on the GIS1 server? And should the ArcView 8 license key be on a server in Tucker, or where? Should the GIS server be located in Parmly 303? Does ONE hardware key in fact suffice for management of all licenses? Who should decide these things and carry them out? My sense is that nobody is really minding the store on this subject --it's not really anybody's assigned responsibility, so it has to fit itself in when, as and if.

I want and need to explore ArcView 8, to see whether it offers enough solutions to our current problems in lab-setting GIS to warrant the effort to deploy it during the next academic year. From what Tom says, Dave Harbor isn't interested in early deployment, though Chris Connors may be. In any case, setup and deployment of ArcIMS and its possible relations to ArcSDE (in either its full-blown SQL Server mode, for which we may or may not have a license, or the read-only server mode) and to ArcGIS 8.1... these things need the attention of somebody who can put together the necessary pieces. That probably comes down to Skip, and probably involves Geoff Marshall --at the very least, it's possible to direct those resources in that general direction.

The contents of the ArcSDE collection need to be designed, with the various user communities in mind. The basic ESRI data (supplied on the CDs) and the Virginia data we've accumulated are obvious candidates. So is the TIGER data that I think John Blackburn's workies have been unpacking. Perhaps the LeBlanc dataset is also a candidate --certainly something that's global in scope would be desirable. Other stuff would be added as needed, but with the usual problem I think of needing a stable drive-letter designation. And somehow the ArcIMS stuff also figures into this. The idea is to provide read-only access to requisite data, in some more orderly fashion than via folders on Miley.

3 July 2001

Debugging the installation of ArcGIS

Yesterday I loaded the Desktop onto the 2000 machine, but was unable to proceed further.

I notice that the first line of the License File says "SERVER atlas.wlu.edu" and gives the Sentinel Key number 37122324 27005 (the first 8 digits are those on the hardware key itself)

...so presumably the first thing the License File does is to try to locate that server, which some browsing discloses is in Geology.

What needs to be done to make a path from the 2000 machine to atlas? If they are on different segments, is there an easy way to reconcile short of rewiring?  And if not, there's a problem in managing the license in a network setting.