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Programming Software IT Technology

Python Included In ArcGIS 9 28

Posted by timothy from the no-charge-for-extra-snake dept.
Party_Pack writes "ESRI, the makers of the GIS (Geographic Information System) Arc/INFO (as well as ArcView) and its more modern COM based successor ArcGIS are once again, in the just released ArcGIS 9, giving their users the choice of a fully featured scripting language rather than just the hideously complex ArcObjects/full programming language model they currently offer. Interestingly they have chosen to move away from their tradition of proprietary languages such as AML and Avenue and use Python. This is great news for both ArcGIS users and the Python community, as ESRI will hopefully feed any development work back into the community."
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Python Included In ArcGIS 9 More

Python Included In ArcGIS 9

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  • Not only Python (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bazouel ( 105242 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @12:34AM (#9244570)
    Any scripting language that supports COM can be used with ArcGIS 9. For example, Perl is also supported.

  • Catching on. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @02:00AM (#9244858) Homepage
    This is cool. Python does seem to be catching on as the embedded scripting language of choice for apps that combine attributes and graphics (eg modelling tools like Blender, as well as GIS). (I've pretty much decided to reject Tcl for Python in Cavor [cavor.org], too). Now if we can just come up with some standard APIs for similar functionality.

    On the other hand, there are some advantages to a scripting language highly tailored to the application domain -- although (IMHO) AML and Avenue aren't exactly stellar examples of this. (I'm thinking more of the GML scripting language for GeoVision's -- later Autodesk's -- VISION* products).

  • Experience shows otherwise (Score:5, Informative)

    by shachart ( 471014 ) <shachar-slashdot&vipe,technion,ac,il> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @03:23AM (#9245149)
    From my experience of programming against ESRI, I seriously doubt the company will contribute anything back to the community. For instance, in a project I once worked on, we developed custom renderers (i.e. custom icons to be displayed on maps etc.), and back then it was pretty much unsupported. The only way we could get support for this was to contribute our custom renderer to ESRI. Did we get any real support from them? no. But our framwork eventually became ArcGIS version 6's renderer hierarchy templates.

    They have a reputation for not contributing anything back. User, beware.
    • And there customer service model is terrible. I am supposed to pay them money to report bugs to them, even if I don't want support! There is no free bug-reporting. They act like you're [or your problems] not important unless you are throwing even more money at them (they're licenses already cost a painfully large amount).

      I ended up sending my bug in through some email I found on their website (I wonder if it made it to the developers or the trash bin). It is extremely painful to work around it and I

    • Re:Experience shows otherwise (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SuperDuh ( 13356 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @08:27AM (#9246242) Homepage
      I agree. I've been doing programming w/ ESRI software in some way or another for 6 years now, and if its taught me anything, its that ESRI surrounds itself with a barrier: No input from the community, no source going out, and definately no help with (let alone acknowledgement of) any bugs/issues with their software. They're a heavily proprietary sw company w/ a tendancy to ignore standards they didn't create (think a GIS equivalent of MS). Don't expect anything back from them.
      I'm done venting now. :)
      • It is right annoying. We did have an ArcGIS developer drop by to let us know exactly what was happening on the server versus client front. They seemed awfully schizophrenia -- they'd just sold out to COM with ArcGIS in a big way, but everything about ArcIMS (ActiveX connector dev freezing, cross-platform server installs and new Linux support, Java "MapObjects") pointed everywhere but Microsoft. They pretty obviously have two sides of the house -- and you wonder sometimes if either is really communicating

      • ESRI takes a beating, finally! (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This thread is great! Straight talk about the Microso~1 the GIS world. Well actually, comparing ESRI to MS is an insult to MS. Microsoft actually has nice offices and treats their employees fairly well. ESRI sticks their employees in the smallest cubes and offices ever, and asks them to work in smog capital of the US: Redlands, CA (it makes nearby neighbor Los Angeles look like Hawaii.)

        If you ever want to see real life Big Brother, go to the annual ESRI User Conference. 10,000 people sitting in a room whil
    • ESRI is fucking evil and I hate them... Their salaries are *EXTREMELY* low, they treat their employees like shit ... let me tell you how they treated me like shit:

      I was just getting out of college, and sent their Redlands, CA office a resume, a few weeks later I get a call "Hello mr so and so, we recieved your resume and are EXTREMELY interested in you. Are you still avaliable? Great, can you call back in two weeks? The manager who needs to interview you is out of town."

      I follow their instructions and

  • Naive submitter. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is great news for both ArcGIS users and the Python community, as ESRI will hopefully feed any development work back into the community

    Why should they be expected to? Python is under the BSD licence. And I would not expect an application of the language to be making changes and additions to that language. The language drives them, not the other way around. They should be keeping compatibility with Python.

    The I expect them to contribute is possibly a bug report or two - maybe even a very minor fix - b

  • Trying to predict the next 2 years... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dotz ( 683519 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @05:51AM (#9245562)
    Being regular Python user/fan, each news, which features Python makes me happy. How do you think, will Python become more and more popular in the next years? I think so.
    • web development: Not only Zope [zope.org] and Plone [plone.org], there's a lot of interesting development going on with Twisted [twistedmatrix.com]... and, well, Twisted is not only about the web, it is about networking in general;
    • .NET / Java development in general: Python in Java [jython.org] exists already... Java gaining more and more popularity? No problem, Python is already there. .NET/Mono taking the market away from Java? The industry will perhaps support more and more .NET techniques - with IronPython [ironpython.org] (featured recently on /.), Python is already there. No problem;
    • some people might wonder if you really need that stinkin' .NET/Java stuff at all - Python is already very portable, but that's not everything - it already supports a wide range of MacOS [python.org]/Unix/win32 [python.net]-specific functionalities.
    • anything else makes you wonder, if Python is a good choice at all? What about realtime applications, like a VOIP phone [sf.net] (GUI included, win32/unix compatible) in Python? Do you read "interpreted" as "slow", do you wonder if Python is good enough to be useful in CPU-demanding programs like games [onlamp.com]? Anything else against it? Perhaps you're worried about Python's extensibility [python.org]?
    • if software telephony sucks for you, perhaps you should try a real mobile phone [mobilewhack.com]
    Is there anything you would like to add to the list? Do you also think 2005/2006 will be the years of Python hype? Having a small part of good things about Python, I'd really like to hear, where does it suck for you. There are many, many things I don't know about it... ;)
  • I am a developer of apps/modules that run inside ArcMap (using VB.NET). I am very interested in getting some of our GIS to learn how to script in ArcObjects so that we can develop a bunch of 'mini-tools' in-house.

    I know it just came out, but are there any good websites that will help teach non-programmers how to use Python in ArcMap/ArcObjects (besides esri.com)? Are there some free download sites? How about more advanced Python (for power users in other languages)?
    • I get a newletter from ESRI and I have gotten it for the past 4-5 years. They ran an article about 8-12 months ago talking about python and how you can use it to write customized stuff for ArcView and ArcGIS. So I think you can use python with older ESRI software and I think that a lot of demo or tutorial python stuff is out there.

  • Ugh. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm developing a large ArcObjects-based extension to ArcGIS -- version 9. We're using C#, which, though it ain't python, isn't a bad language either.

    Trust me on this: No language will make ArcGIS fun, or even marginally handy. That application is the worlds' largest heap of disgusting bloat, and it is buggier than hell. Have a look at the object diagrams [esri.com] (warning: 10Mb PDF, not that I feel any guilt about slashdotting ESRI) and see for yourself...

    Avenue was a joy by comparison, although it was extreme
  • "Because geoprocessing often involves processing many datasets or datasets with many records, geoprocessing tasks typically are repetitive and good candidates for automation. Any scripting language with a COM interpreter, such as Python, JScript, or VBScript, can be used to write scripts that execute ArcGIS Desktop 9 geoprocessing tools and automate tasks. Because these scripting languages are not proprietary, many resources for learning them are available." Source [esri.com]
    __________________
    working & blogging from nigeria [seunosewa.com]
  • Why are so many of you happy? You should all be flinging huge piles of crap at ESRI despite their attempt to modernize and diversify!

    After all, in the world of GIS, they are MICROSOFT. (cue evil music)

    Get back in character! ESRI is the devil! start flinging insults no matter how rediculous so you can feel like you are part of the group! .... oh, then while you are at it, go opensource ...

    --use MapServer with PostGIS spatial database and save $50,000 over ArcIMS with ArcSDE/Oracle (and have it function

  • I hope this is not getting off topic...but...I am rather new to GIS, and I have a lot of discretion in choosing my tools so I was looking at either using ESRI or going with GRASS. I have known about python+ESRI for awhile and I love Python, but I decided to go with GRASS. My main reasons where that GRASS runs on OS X, and GRASS is very powerful. GRASS users claim that it is the best GIS available...and I also find it very powerful...however I do not have ESRI experience and so I can't make any comparisons.

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