New Data on Beta Site

We are pleased to announce the availability of Public Water Systems & Electric Service Territories via http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov.

Public Water Systems was developed by the Arkansas Department of Health. Work is still underway but a significant amount of progress has been made.
http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/Home.html?q=Public+Water+Systems

Electric Service Territories was developed by a number of electric service providers. AGIO staff compiled their work into a single file. This file is also still under development, but a significant amount of the state has been covered.
http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/Home.html?q=Electric+Service+Territories

Look for more updates in the coming months.

http://geostor.blogspot.com/

Exciting Times

GeoStor 6.0 was released as beta on April 13, 2009. We have learned a lot the past few weeks. Our original intent was for GeoStor 5.0 to go dark on June 20, 2009. We are still moving toward that goal, but will be doing so in a ‘slower’ manner.

In the coming weeks you will begin to notice links to GeoStor 5.0 will redirect you to the beta version. Do not be alarmed. This is only intended to assist in additional beta testing. Dates to be aware of:
June 8, 2009: Various links on the GeoStor 5.0 Homepage will redirect to GeoStor 6.0
June 17, 2009: Various ArcIMS Services will be stopped. Ones we plan to keep will be accessible via http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/arcgis/services (click here to learn how to connect)
BASEMAP
ELEVA_DEM_HSHADE_ASPECT
GEOSTOR_ALL_FEATURE_LAYERS
IMAGE_DRGIMAGE_LULC
IMAGE_ORTHO
IMAGE_THEMATIC_MAPPER

Our intent is to leave the geostor.arkansas.gov DNS in place and redirect it to beta.geostor.arkansas.gov when the final transition is completed. We believe this will prevent you from having to reconnect to the various services when GeoStor 6.0 goes to full production. We are still investigating this and apologize for any inconvenience.

We are continuing to work with the application custodians and hope to have their applications transitioned and fully functional by the end of the month. We also anticipate the addition of some more data by the end of the month. Watch for updates.

As always, please drop a note if you have problems.
http://geostor.blogspot.com/

GeoStor 6.0 Updates

I'm about to head out the door on vacation so I'm going to make this quick J. I will be out of town the week after that for the FME User Conference in Canada (going to Canada, eh!) but I should be available in between sessions while I'm there.

• Flex Viewer Fixes
  
  • I have modified the code for the default viewer to fix some issues that I've previously blogged about, the source code and instructions are available if anyone wants them.
    
    • When you select the Satellite, Topo or Relief map, the road layer will be overlaid at the same time
      
    • The Topo or Relief layers were not cached beyond 1:6000 so you would just get a blank window, you will now see the Basemap layer instead
      
    • BE SURE YOU CLEAR YOUR BROWSER CACHE OR YOU WILL NOT SEE THE CHANGES!
      
• FME Server
  
  • We are now running a distributed and redundant setup of FME Server, setup the same way our AGS servers are
    
  • The FME Servers are sharing a database so we have a single place to go for job history, configuration and so forth
    
  • I have an architecture diagram on the beta site: http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/files/new_environment.pdf
    
• Lessons Learned
  
  • I had a pretty major setback last week, this is one of the reasons I haven't posted to the blog, I've been busy trying to recover from it
    
    • As they almost always are, this boo-boo was my fault, I was attempting to migrate the FME Servers to the setup described above
      
    • I was low on disk space so I decided to delete some of the virtual machine snapshots that I have taken to be able to revert back to a good configuration if something went south
      
    • Unfortunately I didn't shut down the virtual machines prior to doing this and it irrevocably corrupted them beyond repair, I won't repeat some of the things that came out of my mouth at that point…
      
    • So, one AGS machine and BOTH
      FME Servers were offline and not coming back any time soon L
      
    • Luckily the new architecture that I have been struggling to get working saved my butt at least for the website and AGS services but all downloads were offline
      
    • I was also lucky in the fact that I had an older copy of one of the FME Server virtual machines on my development boxes so I brought it back up to snuff and then cloned it, I had the production FME Server online within a day and the development one a day later
      
    • I wasn't as lucky for the AGS machine that I crashed, I had to rebuild it from scratch which took me a couple days from start to end
      
    • I am happy to report that (as far as I know) everything is back up to where it should be and better than it was before
      
    • So whatever you do, DO NOT DELETE YOUR SNAPSHOTS WITHOUT TAKING YOUR VM OFFLINE FIRST!
      

So much for a quick post! Hopefully everything will stay working while I'm on vacation but sadly that isn't the way things work. You know how it is, when Daddy is away, crap breaks…

Glen (gone on vacation) Rhea

http://geostor.blogspot.com

GeoStor 6.0 Updates

It has been awhile since I have posted any updates, mainly because I have been so busy working on them! Now that we have gotten our AGS services stabilized (hopefully…) I have been able to move ahead with other projects that are dependent upon AGS. I will outline what we are rolling out with this latest update below. If you find any issues (and I know you will) please let us know via the GIS Users Forum listserv, this blog, or our email address.

• GeoCortex Essentials is now working for all the application map viewers
  
• The Advanced Search page UI has been updated:
  
  • Checking or unchecking the clip by map viewer control will:
    
    • Enable/disable the map controls and make it opaque or visible
      
    • Change the download dialog box appropriately
      
    • Change the text above the map viewer
      
    • You can check this box on the fly and change your download, after you have already searched or beforehand
      
  • This change is to address some confusion about what the map is for on the advanced search page, hopefully this will clear that up
    
• Our main map viewer has been replaced by the ESRI Flex Viewer, hopefully you will like this map viewer better
  
  • This should address some of the JavaScript issues and browser compatibility issues we have seen
    
  • CAVEATS:
    
    
    • You have to clear your browser cache if there have been any updates of the Flex Viewer otherwise you will never see them, also do this if you have any issues with the Viewer
      
    • 
      In order to see the Hybrid map you have to click Live Maps under the Map icon and enable it, I haven't found away to show two services at once in the default Viewer without doing it this way
      
  • We will be putting out a tutorial on how to use the new Viewer shortly
    
• Last and not least, I am putting a beta Geocoder online for people to use. We are also using it in the Flex Viewer (go to Tools and Locate)
  
  • This is a composite Geocoder that consists of the following Locators:
    
    • Address points (for counties that have them)
      
    • Arkansas Centerline File
      
    • Streamline Zip9
      
  • Issues:
    
    • The Flex Viewer lookup doesn't seem to honor the match sensitivity for some reason, so the inputted addresses need to be pretty close spelling and format-wise to match
      
    • The Reverse Geocoder hasn't been tested very much, I used a known X,Y and it returned an address, other than that I haven't used it.
      
  • CAVEATS:
    
    • This Geocoder could go away or get changed at any time so please do not use it in any production applications
      
    • Please do not do any big batch geocoding jobs against it for right now, I will disable that feature if necessary
      

 

GeoStor 6.0 Blog:

http://geostor.blogspot.com

GeoStor 6.0 AGS & ArcCatalog Connections

I worked with ESRI last week to get this issue resolve and it appears to be working finally. Please see my previous post on how to connect and let me know if you have any issues.

The issue was with the virtual directory settings in AGS, since we are using what is considered a "web farm" you need to use the DNS name (the public facing address) for all the virtual directory settings. Once we figured that out, everything started working great. I have also fixed a few small issues that we discovered along the way.

Glen

http://geostor.blogspot.com

Lawrence County Parcel Points

Lawrence County Parcel (pt) data is now available of GeoStor (http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/Home.html?q=parcel+centroid+dl).

http://geostor.blogspot.com/

You can have your GIS data searchable in GeoStor

GeoStor 6.0 (currently in beta) enables users to find and link to GIS data that is not distributed for download by GeoStor. You can see the 'off site publishers' currently available at the following link http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/Home.html?q=offsite.

We would like to add your data for Arkansas. Please send us a link to your GIS data on ftp sites, webs sites, web services and/or map viewers. geostor@arkansas.gov

http://geostor.blogspot.com/