WGS84 Conversion

I have been working on converting all web map services to WGS84 and it is becoming a long and laborious project so I want to know if people even want to convert to WGS84. If no one wants it I'll just leave everything as is and move on to something else.

Pros:

• It's a standard projection, so it makes mashups A LOT easier
  
• GPS points would work (they have to be converted to UTM now)
  
• Our services would be compatible with just about everyone else
  
• You can still use the services in your map documents
  

Cons:

• It's a pain to have to re-project the data every time
  
• The cached services in WGS84 will not re-project on the fly
  
• You will get a warning about different projections in map documents
  

There will be a poll on our blog, please select your preference there.

http://geostor.blogspot.com/

Glen

 

GeoStor Update

So many things going on! Brief summary:

• There were some issues with raster downloads, these should be fixed now
  
  • You also shouldn't be able to download a raster data set in incompatible formats now
    
• BIG NEWS!!!!
  
  • Most of our storage hardware will be out of warranty in a few months and you know what happens when stuff goes out of warranty…
    
  • We petitioned for funds to replace that old hardware and it was approved!
    
    • So, hopefully, during the holiday season we will be upgrading our storage hardware.
      
    • This will cause some outages unfortunately so be prepared for it over the holidays.
      
• Image Server
  
  • The migration is on-going, we have it installed and are building the service definitions
    
  • We will be migrating during the holiday season hopefully
    
    • This will affect anyone using our raster caches unfortunately, there will be more on this later
      
• WGS84 Migration
  
  • We are migrating all our web services to WGS84 to be compatible with everyone else, bring on the mashups!
    
  • This will also allow the use of standard GPS coordinates to be used on the map viewers
    
• SQL Server 2008 Migration
  
  • Information about the new SQL Server installation
    
    • Everything will be 64bit
      
      • Windows 2008 x64
        
      • SQL Server 2008 x64
        
      • ArcSDE x64 (Yes they have a 64 bit version of SDE. I know, right?)
        
    • It will be clustered using MSCS
      
    • All new hardware
      
      • 3Ghz Dual Quad Core Processors
        
      • 8GB RAM
        
      • REALLY fast storage - 2TB RAID 10
        
    • Spatial Changes
      
      • We will be using the new SDE data type ST_GEOMETRY which is almost twice as fast as the one we're currently using in Oracle
        
      • We will have SQL Server 2008 Spatial
        
  • Status:
    
    • The cluster has been built
      
    • SQL Server has been installed
      
    • I am working with ESRI to get SDE working because there are some strange issues going on
      

Glen

Visit our blog: http://geostor.blogspot.com/

Data & Metadata Updates

Izard and Calhoun County have been added to the Arkansas Road Centerline File http://bit.ly/4juvmq Press release available on AGIO Blog http://agioar.wordpress.com/

Various Statewide Datasets are being exported to the FTP site (weekly) for use by a number of users. http://bit.ly/3rXKcb

White County has been added to the cadastral layers http://bit.ly/ak3cQ

Connections to WMS (http://bit.ly/2wQMH0)/ WFS (http://bit.ly/2wQMH0) have been added to each metadata file

GeoStor Outage & Download Issue

DIS will be having a power outage this weekend so GeoStor will be offline for part of Saturday and all of Sunday. I expect that GeoStor will be back online Monday morning at the latest. We are also having some issues with downloads and are working to resolve them.

 

Glen

GeoStor Blog: http://geostor.blogspot.com/

GeoStor FTP Server Issue

It looks like the FTP server issues have been resolved (for now anyway). Let us know if you have any issues. Also, we are really close to migrating to a new FTP server, hopefully within the next week or so. Hopefully that will resolve all the issues we have been having with the old FTP server.

Glen

GeoStor Blog: http://geostor.blogspot.com/

GeoStor Outage

Our FTP server has experienced some data corruption (again) and I am attempting to repair it, however this means that Downloads are down as well. I expect the repair process to continue though the evening since the disk being repaired is 2TB in size. I have posted a notice on the GeoStor home page and I will do another blog post when everything is resolved.

Glen

GeoStor Blog: http://geostor.blogspot.com/

GeoStor Updates and Outages

Outages

We are currently experiencing issues with our FTP server so if you are unable to get to an FTP link that worked previously that is probably why. I expect to have this resolved by Monday but there are no guarantees unfortunately. On to happier things…

Updates

We have added some pretty cool features and fixed some more bugs as usual. We also have some exciting things that are up and coming as well.

• You can now save your download preferences for email, format and projection. Just click the checkbox where it says and click submit. If you want to change your preferences, just click the checkbox again and submit your download.
  
  • CAVEAT: You have to have cookies enabled in your browser to use this feature!
    
• I have developed a widget that allows you to search GeoStor from your own website, pretty sweet huh? See the next bullet for more information.
  
• I have been working hard on documenting the GeoStor API so people can start using our services and have it pretty much finished. Just click the Developers link at the top of the home page. I will also be posting some more of our code at some point in the future as well. If you are going to the AR GIS User's Forum conference in Eureka you will get to see almost all of it on my poster. J
  
• PLEASE NOTE!!! Not all these changes have been pushed out to production yet but should be there by Monday.
  

Up and Coming

• We are migrating from web map caches to ArcGIS Image Server, there are some advantages and disadvantages to this move but it will benefit everyone in the long run.
  
  • Advantages
    
    • Using AIS will reduce our storage needs for raster by half if not more.
      
    • It will drastically reduce the amount of time we spend working on raster data.
      
    • It is faster in ArcGIS products than the map cache for some odd reason.
      
    • We will be able to offer any imagery we have as a service with very little overhead (think archived rasters…).
      
  • Disadvantages
    
    • All links to our imagery will change, unfortunately.
      
    • I'm not sure what the impact will be to our servers resource-wise as I am unable to reproduce the production load in my development environment.
      
    • AIS looks slower in web applications than a map cache although it isn't much slower in total load time.
      
• I am finishing the FTP Server migration next week so we will be on all new hardware and this is a step in the process to migrate to AIS as well.
  
• We are migrating to SQL Server 2008 as soon as I can get it installed and move everything over.
  

Sorry this was such a long post but it has been awhile since I've posted on the blog and had a lot to cover!

Glen

GeoStor Blog: http://geostor.blogspot.com/