Over the last few weeks I have had a few users asking for detailed security requirements for ArcGIS Server 9.3 running on Windows. As such I wanted to remind everyone of a whitepaper that is published on the Enterprise Resource Centre. This document provides a list of security settings required for ArcGIS Server implementations. Most customers will not need to refer to this document, as the default installation steps help manage these settings automatically. This document is primarily for customers who need to manually set security settings in hardened environments. There are four primary areas of...

Ben Riga has recorded a great episode of Lesson Learned where he chats with Rex Hansen. In this episode of Lessons Learned I chat with Rex Hansen of ESRI.  Rex works on MapIt; a product for visualizing enterprise data on maps.  This was recently released as a on-premises product that enables developers to work with the tabular and spatial data in SQL Server 2008 and integrate that data with maps on ArcGIS online and Bing Maps. ESRI MapIt was announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Business Partner Conference 2009. This latest product offering from ESRI is a combination of software and online...

With the theme Map You App, ESRI’s 2010 Mashup Challenge invites memory of the geodeveloper community to stretch their imaginations, test their technical skills and developer creative geospatial applications. The guidelines are simple: construct a mashup using ESRI’s ArcGIS online content and Web APIs, publish the related URL, shoot a video describing the application, and post it on YouTube. The first-place entry will take home $10,000; second place will win $5,000; and third and fourth places will get $2,500 each. Judges will base their selections on uniqueness, utility, user experience, and...

Late last year the registration and call for presentations opened for the ESRI Developer Summit 2010. There are a bundle of changes to the format from last year and full information about this can be found here: http://geo.geek.nz/events/… Now that the call for presentations deadline has passed, community voting for presentations has opened. Community voting is taking place from January 20 through February 7. Over the next two weeks the community will be able to vote for the sessions they would like to see at the ESRI Developer Summit 2010. Voting is easy and simple. You can promote or demote a...

With the situation which everyone is well aware of in Haiti, many organisations have been stepping up to help in responding to this tragic disaster. ESRI is one of these organisations. As part of a press release which has just been released, ESRI talks about the way they are helping assist in the Haiti earthquake response. ESRI is working closely with the geographic information system (GIS) community and agencies responding to the Haiti earthquake by providing software, technical support, GIS data, and personnel. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake—characterized as one of the worst natural...

VMware has published a comprehensive deployment guide for ArcGIS Server 9.3. While this guide is focused on deployment it does contain a number of technical considerations to take into account during deployment. This document describes the best practices for running a typical ESRI ArcGIS® Server deployment on VMware® Infrastructure. It provides basic guidance on the architectural design of an ArcGIS deployment and the value of utilizing the VMware platform to provide virtual infrastructure.  It then discusses results of recent testing conducted jointly by VMware and ESRI characterizing the...

One of the new slick features of Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is the ability to handle VHD’s. You can use them for a number of different tasks including archiving files and folders through to booting up another operating system. While Windows 7 supports VHD’s, they aren’t as easy to work with as uou have to use Disk Management via the administration tools to mount and unmount VHD’s. This can become rather painful if you are wanting to work with many of them and do this often. There is a neat little tool called VHD Attach which speeds up this process, allowing you to...

ESRI MapIt was announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Business Partner Conference 2009. This latest product offering from ESRI is a combination of software and online services that enable you to create simple maps from your enterprise data. I had a full write up on MapIt here: http://geo.geek.nz/esri/… For those users that haven’t been able to try it yet, you can get an insight into what MapIt is via a few podcasts that have been made available as part of the ESRI Speaker Series. A Conversation on MapIt Part I: What is MapIt? In the first of three podcasts on MapIt, ESRI’s Josh Lewis and Art Haddad...

For those wanting to get started with ESRI MapIt 1.1, there is now a step-by-step guide available. This guide comes bundled with everything you need including detailed instructions and screenshots. I wrote up post when MapIt was released around installation. You can find this here: http://geo.geek.nz/development/… This guide is meant to help new users become familiar with MapIt by understanding some of the common workflows associated with viewing your business data on a map.  The guide is split into four sections: Importing your business data to SQL Server 2008 Spatially enabling SQL Server...

The last few days have been interesting. I have been using Graffiti 1.2 as my blog engine for quite a while now and the time has come to move over to a better platform. Graffiti is a great engine but Telligent has dropped support for it and it’s basically dead. The product itself has been released to the world and is now open source. For those interested there is a new version available and this can be found here: http://graffiticms.codeplex.com/. Due to this I decided to move to Wordpress as my blog engine. Initially I thought this wouldn’t be that hard but its been a reasonable challenge to get...