Late last week Microsoft announced as part of MIX10 that spatial data support will be coming to the Microsoft SQL Azure Platform. Microsoft® SQL Azure™ Database is a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server® technologies. It provides a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any software. High availability and fault tolerance is built-in and no physical administration is required. This is...

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...

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...

In case you missed it a patch fixing the above issue is now available. This issue was identified late last year with ArcGIS 9.3.1 Service Pack 1. Details about this problem can be found on my post here: http://geo.geek.nz/esri/… The patch addresses the following issue: NIM052174 – Raster Catalogs and Feature Classes with raster fields stored in ArcSDE for SQL Server do not display after applying the 9.3.1 Service Pack 1. Description: The pixel data of a raster catalog stored in ArcSDE for SQL Server 9.3.1 sp1 does not display. Performing an identify operation on a feature of a feature...

For those that have installed ArcGIS 9.3.1 Service Pack 1 and are using Microsoft SQL Server with Raster Catalogs and are noticing a few problems, you are not alone. Several users have called in to ESRI Support Services in the last few days and reported the following issue: after installing ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1 Service Pack 1 when direct connections are used or after installing ArcSDE 9.3.1 Service Pack 1 when application server connections are used, Raster catalogs are not displaying in ArcMap. This issue also impacts Raster Fields stored in Microsoft SQL Server. If you have Raster fields on your...

ESRI MapIt was announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Business Partner Conference 2009 earlier this year. 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/… With Microsoft PDC 2009 kicking off today, ESRI MapIt 1.1 was made available for download. Over the last four months, the MapIt product has been refined and optimized, and includes a multitude of enhancements. MapIt 1.1 comes packed with a bundle of new features. These new...

An updated version of the Geodatabase Toolset (GDBT) for ArcCatalog 9.3/9.3.1 is now available for download.   The Geodatabase Toolset (GDBT) for ArcCatalog 9.3/9.3.1 provides the tools to assist you with monitoring, investigating, and reporting the performance of your multiuser geodatabase. With the GDBT, you can monitor the day-to-day health of your geodatabase and better investigate performance issues. The highlights of this release: It works on both ArcGIS 9.3 and 9.3.1 clients, with both 9.3 and 9.3.1 ArcSDE geodatabases. It works on all supported ArcSDE geodatabase DBMS platforms: DB2,...

ESRI MapIt was released earlier this year at the Microsoft Worldwide Business Partner Conference 2009. This latest product offering from ESRI is a combination of software and online services that enables you to create simple maps from your enterprise data. Since the release of MapIt, I have been working heavily with our Business Partners and Developers in New Zealand to promote MapIt. We have a number initiatives underway to raise the awareness of MapIt in New Zealand and I will write up a post about these as soon as I can. For those users that haven’t yet been able to try it, I thought I would...

Now that the MapIt blog is up and running we are starting to see some content flowing. In the first series of posts, Rex talks about MapIt and answers a number of questions that have been asked since it’s release. Questions ranging from functionality through to packaging through to price. I get asked a lot of the similar questions so this is a nice series of posts to answer these. So what do you get with MapIt? Well there are four key components that make up MapIt. Spatial Data Assistant Spatial Data Service ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF WebPart for Microsoft SharePoint Rex has...

  A number of users have been asking this question. To answer this clearly. Here are the limitations: Upon the first use of the Spatial Data Assistant or the Spatial Data Service, both are activated for a 60-day trial period. After 60 days, neither the Spatial Data Assistant or the Spatial Data Service will function. The Spatial Data Assistant only imports 100 records from a shapefile into SQL Server or only geocodes 100 records in a SQL Server table. The Spatial Data Service only returns 100 records for a single query. These limitations are removed when MapIt is fully licensed....