SDE – GeoTools Micro Dictionary

If you don’t know GeoTools and face the task of passing some application from SDE to GT, you may find this table useful for initial orientation in problem. The list of SDE classes very limited though.

SDE	GeoTools	GeoAPI	JTS
SeCoordinateReference		org.opengis.referencing.crs.CoordinateReferenceSystem
SePolygon			com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Polygon
SePoint			com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Point
SeExtent			com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Envelope
SeRow	org.geotools.feature.Feature
SeLayer	org.geotools.data.DataStore
SeTable	org.geotools.data.postgis.FeatureType
SeShape			com.vividsolutions.jts.geom.Geometry
SeColumnDefinition	org.geotools.feature.AttributeType
SeQuery	org.geotools.data.DataStore.getFeatures()
SeRegistration	no need – sde specific
SDEPoint	no need – sde specific

Mapserver Enterprise vs Mapserver Cheetah

Note: I have rewritten this article after crtitics which was deserved a bit:-)

To whom it may concern.. This is still a bit naming mess. The two pieces of software have almost nothing to to do with each other.
“Mapserver Enterprise” simply does’n exist anymore and is now called MapGuide Open Source, open source approach to web mapping, based on original Autodesk’s code. Despite of the former name, there is no “child” version of UMN Mapserver nor fork, there’s one Mapserver. A bit of history – Autodesk entered in free GIS in 2005 with its MapGuide. As they were publishing a huge amount of code I think that they wanted to make it a big way. They invented these two names, but there was little response for calling Mapserver other names.. Now, the name “Mapserver Enterprise” is not promoted anymore and the product resides on http://mapguide.osgeo.org/. Anyway, some people from Autodesk still call it so – I have heard it recently on GlobalGeo in Barcelona. But it is probably only a mistake – Mapserver Enterprise simply doesn’t exist anymore.

MapGuide is not written in Java  as I originally thougt, but “entirely coded in cross-platform C++, using SWIG to generate the user-facing web APIs” (citing Jason Birch) and has some quite interesting features – i.e. using DXF vector plugin in browser, extensive ajax use etc. This comparing to old unix-like C/C++ mapserver may appear really to be anvaced edition. I certainly think that != true; Everybody can choose the best for his needs – oh wait there is already Geoserver! Cool J2EE app built with GeoTools.

shp2sde.exe does not allow import layers without any features

When importing empty layer, command shp2sde (8.3 version) complains something like this: “The shapefile in it’s entirety exceedes valid coordinate range”. The workaround is: add a dummy feature in ArcMap to this empty shapefile, and delete it later from the database manager. Hope it helps.

deleting SDE layers in MS SQL, let’s click!

OK, it is about ESRI, but in real world we often have to work with commercial sw.  For example, I am working with SDE 8.2, upon an MS SQL 2000. Here, when I want to delete a layer from a databse, I use sdelayer command.

sdelayer -o delete -l spatialtable,Shape -i 5151 -s host -D db -u user -p pass

However, this command does not delete all the layer (!) . Reason: since you are forced to specify a column i the -l option, only this “Shape” spatial column registrys are deleted (from internal SDE database and shape tables). The rest of data remains. You have to remove them manually by clicking – this explains the title.

Note: I am no expert on ESRi, there can be some other commands. Let me know in this case.

From ESRI SDE to GeoTools

I am currently rewriting one spatially enabled application, that uses SDE now. I will pass it to GeoTools 2.3 that we could work towards PostGIS and later more data sources. Looking forward to have GDAL bindings in GT!
It will be a long way. To be continued…

Flash Earth

Again, client of Google Maps, Viesual Earth and others. Nice interaction, although a bit short of funcionality.. But, obiously Paul Nieve likes just playing with flash – nice toy!

http://www.flashearth.com/

wikimapia

Hm, nice vector highlighting!! And, nice project!

http://wikimapia.org/

Wikiloc

You sure know a lot of google maps and earths. This page uses google and wms servers to the maximum. Nice thigs is that they offer you wms servers available for current zone.

http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/spatialArtifacts.do

tree-it!

So this is very nice project. I could participate but I did not had time… Anyway don’t expect any map with layers:-).

http://tree-nation.com/

Manual editing of .map file –

Yeah, it is a pain, especially when you have more layers. But it is not MapServer’s fault, since you have to put a lot of information in there!

For WMS and probably for other services, if you don’t put in LAYER’s tag METADATA line “ows_extent”, mapserver keeps computing the extent every time you make a getcapabilities request. You cannot put EXTENT tag into the LAYER only, because strange things happen – seems that depends on the datasource, when the LatLonBoundingBox tag appears. With “ows_extent” this everything OK. Mapserver 4.10

Next time I will have to write some .map manually I will generate it with some simple script!