Day 1 Plenary Session At The ESRI Developer Summit 2008

Wow!

It has been a pretty full on day here at the ESRI Developer Summit in Palm Springs. The ESRI Developer Summit kicked off this morning. The plenary session was a lot bigger than that of the ESRI Business Partner Conference. It felt almost as twice as big in fact!

From the introduction video that was played I really liked the following line:

Code to Live
Live to Code

I think this sum’s up dedicated developers really well!

Jim Mckinney who is the ArcGIS Product Manager kicked things off talking about some numbers for this years conference:

1300 developers are attending from 69 organisations in 49 countries with over 250 ESRI developer staff present.

Jim mentioned how developers are the key success for ESRI and showcased some of ArcGIS 9.3 Some of the highlights include:

Better performance
Easily securable
Resources centers
API’s

Under better performance we have improved caching coming which includes partial and on demand caching. We have efficient web mapping applications which are light weight and have less round trips to the server. Security is now also available out of the box from the ArcGIS Server Manager tool.

The newly launched ArcGIS Server Resource Centre is a repository of resources which includes everything from sample code to source code to a code gallery allowing users to find information quickly and easily. It even allows users to upload their own tasks to share with other users out there.

Rex Hansen talked about some of the .NET ADF and showed us a few demos of how ESRI is now making use of the ASP.NET AJAX framework. This makes life loads easier than using the callback framework in .NET. Rex also showed us a Microsoft SharePoint integration demonstration. A map control was embedded into a SharePoint website which updated on the fly showing customer locations. Neat stuff.

The Java ADF was also showcased. This was great to see ESRI showing this off on stage. Something we are not really used to in the past events. Ismael Chivite, the ArcGIS Server Product Manager talked about the three new API’s which are coming with ArcGIS Server. These are:

ArcGIS JavaScript API
ArcGIS JavaScript Extension for the Google Maps API
ArcGIS JavaScript Extension for Microsoft Virtual Earth

Ismael mentioned how this is making web developer with ArcGIS Server easy. The ArcGIS JavsScript API is built using the DOJO framework. Jeremy Bartley showcased these API’s with some demonstrations.

A new geometry service is coming in ArcGIS Server 9.3 along with the ArcGIS Server Services Explorer to discover services. I will touch on these in upcoming posts.

Euan Cameron took the stage covering ArcGIS Engine 9.3 and ArcGIS Explorer talking about what’s coming in these products. A new cool feature is that ArcGIS Engine 9.3 now has server synchronisation just like ArcMobile along with ArcGIS Desktop synchronisation. There are a bundle of new editing tools. ArcGIS Engine now includes Microsoft SQL Server Express along with having the functionality of geodata replication. Other fixes and changes in ArcGIS Engine 9.3 include:

An extensible editing framework
Dynamic display enhancements
3D spatial operators
Geoprocessing tool execution improvements
Improved help and SDK support

Some of the fixes and changes in ArcGIS 9.3 include:

Aware editing support
HTML popup windows for layers
Improved online support
Support for VBA 6.5

The next demonstration was pretty awesome. It was a simulated crash of ArcGIS 9.3. This was to show off the new error detection and debugging tool for tracking down random crashes. Great to see this was demoed.

ArcMobile has a bundle of new improvements as well. There is an improved map display as well as a new custom graphics layer and map graphics layer. There is support for larger datasets and better support for GPS’s.

The ArcMobile Editor was showcased by Bernie which showed configurable enterprise data collection in the field. The was powered by a the new workflows and task UI framework.

ArcGIS Explorer was the next thing on the list to be talked about. We are currently at build 450. Build 480 is scheduled for release in May with builds 600 and 700 coming later this year.

A few things coming for the future include enterprise GDB connections along with the ability to open .nmf files directly from the web. Curtain plots making use of OpenGL are also on the agenda.

With build 480 we will see:

Enhanced content
Multi-threaded performance increases
Direct connection to ArcSDE
Support for georss
A number of updates to the core
Graticules

With build 600 we will see:

A focus on user experiences
Ease of use
A whole new redesigned UI
Integrated 2D and 3D views
Markup and collobration support
Map controls which can be embeded into custom desktop applications.
Vertical exaggeration options

There is a full new redesigned UI based on the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon. It is  clean sleak looking UI which provides quicker access to certain functions. The new UI is just amazing! The contents panel can now be minimised to be available on demand to you have bigger real estate for your maps.

With the ArcGIS Explorer SDK, a number of classes have been overloaded. There is better support for intellisense within Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. A bundle of helper methods are available to reduce coding as well. Collections within the ArcGIS Explorer SDK now supports .NET enumerations as well.

I was pretty blown away with the new features coming in ArcGIS Explorer. Where can I get a copy?

Scott Morehouse provided us with a bit of an insight into the future and what’s coming. He mentioned that the web is at the centre focus. ArcGIS 9.3 is basically completing many of the concepts that were initial meant to be for ArcGIS 9.2. ArcGIS 9.4 will be the next big release, building on ArcGIS 9.3. There will be no crazy enhancements or change to the architecture of the system. There are going to be more releases as well to help get fixes and improvements out there faster.

For ArcGIS Server the focus is going to be on stability and performance. Growth on the Linux support with improved services. ESRI is currently rewriting the dynamic map engine within ArcGIS Server. This is to increase performance and rendering of tiles. There are going to be a bundle of new .NET ADF features as well as API’s for Adobe Flex and Microsoft Sliverlight. There will be new geodatabase API’s for .NET and Java.

For ArcGIS Desktop the focus is also going to be on stability and performance with more of a focus on editing and map compilation.

For ArcMobile, ESRI will be support more devices and platforms.

Jim Barry ended the talks finishing on the EDN program. All active EDN subscribers are eligible for the ArcGIS 9.3 beta program which is currently underway. Jim also mentioned that ESRI are redesigning the forums and some of the ESRI Support Centre.

There was a lot of content as you can see from above. It was a good plenary and it was great to see some of those demonstrations and product experts talking about what’s coming. All of this was done in just over two hours!

After the plenary it was off to the ArcGIS Server roadmap session.