Hobu, Inc.

I spent plenty more time in the islands today, and I think the ESRI developers now are starting to look at the floor when they see me so they don’t have to talk to me anymore ;). I asked a question about whether or not ArcIMS supports query against specific versions in ArcSDE at version 9, but I didn’t get an answer. I might get an answer later, but for now, I can safely say that MapServer definitly does something that ArcIMS does with respect to ArcSDE.

I also found out today that ESRI will be end-of-lifing ArcView 3.x right after the conference. The specific term that the product specialist used was “extended support”, which means no updates and no certification with new operating systems (say, Windows XP SP2, for instance). This sucks, but it was coming. Too soon in my opinion, but there isn’t much we as Avenue users can do except lobby for them to open source ArcView 3.x so we can do what we need to with it.

I also made a contact with Wacom about getting a tablet/monitor for doing heads-up digitizing. This is something that could be very useful and much more efficient than doing the digitizing on-screen. I can’t wait to play with it.

I spent most of today in the developer islands talking to ESRI developers about many topics. I brought up the open sourcing of ArcView 3.x (it raised some eyebrows, but didn’t gain too much traction :), I talked to SDE developers about upcoming changes and additions to the SDE C API, and I chatted quite a bit with the Geoprocessing developers.

I finally finshed the development of my Powerpoint for my presentation on Thursday after seeing some of the Geoprocessing sessions and getting a chance to guage the level of expertise of the audience and who I should target it at. It’s ready to go for the most part, just got to get to Thursday now.

Patrick and I finished the night by going to Sushi Bar Nippon in the Gaslamp District. By far the best food of the trip, as we ate Canadian role, much tuna, and plenty of unagi (freshwater eel). We might try and get back there, I think…

After getting in just in time to see Jack Dangermond give the opening session, I sat down to a long morning of underwhelming product demos and much banter of the likes of “we are changing the world”, where everyone gives them a nice pat on the back and feels all nice and fuzzy.

In the afternoon, I was impressed by the upcoming addition in ArcSDE 9.1 of history tables in addition to the adds and deletes tables. This will give us the ability to have time-sensitive versions, much like I have been trying to implement (unsuccessfully, I might add) at work. Whether or not the actual in-the-field implementation actually works is yet to be seen, but the feauture looks promising.

Finally, them map gallery brought some refreshments and hundreds of maps. I joked that ESRI should develop a map beautification button that turns the crappy, poor colors, comic sans fonts, no legends, map titles or descriptive text maps into winners. It’s also funny that some of these same maps thought it necessary to enter themselves in the Best Cartography contest that goes on in the map gallery. The software might get better in the next years, but the fact is that most people never get beyond the defaults of the software. This is as clear as ever when it comes to the map gallery, where I can tell by the map which software product was used to draw it with.

This will be my third ESRI User Conference in the past six years, with my first conference being as a student assistent and my second bringing first place in the software integration category for avTerra. This year I will be presenting A Guide to the Python Universe for ESRI Users, but the presentation isn’t quite done yet

I came to San Diego a bit early to catch the last game of the Padres home stand with the Pirates. Petco park is a great baseball stadium, with nice views, interesting areas, and comfortable, old-style metal armrest seating. The Padres weren’t able to pull it out, giving up another run in the top of the ninth inning to lose 4-2. It was still nice to see the game and the park, though.

I was also able to grab some sushi with Patrick at Sushi Ito. I had my first chance to try uni, or sea urchin roe, which Patrick described as tasting like the tidal basin smells (to which I concurred). I don’t know that I would have it again, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.