Installing ArcGIS Explorer (AGX)

Below are my thoughts on my first play with AGX. They say the initial distribution is only available to those with existing ESRI Server maintenance licenses. None-the-less, I was able to download from ESRI downloads without explicitly providing license codes. The download page also provides links to the forum area where you can learn what issues others have experienced.

Note that to download AGX’s 29Mb install file you will need an ESRI Global account and pre-installed Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. Read the installation notes, links are given. Apart from that, the installation was painless.

Initial opening of the application allows you to set your home server, whether it be ESRI’s or your own. It was disconcerting not immediately having any data (content) to drape over the visible wireframe. So I needed to search around. I found a satellite_world.nml (project file) at ArcGIS Online. I simply downloaded to my harddisk and opened it using AGX – later learnt that you can simply load from the link. There is also a metadata file at the ArcGIS Online website to learn about what data you are looking at.

At first it was slow, likely due to caching as it became much faster as I started moving about.

Lots of tools to play with – measure, find, transparency, swipe, … and given that you can add a multitude of content from services such as ArcGIS, IMS and WMS servers or kml, shape, raster, geodatabases and nmf files, it is impressive. I see the range of ‘web-services’ (tools) becoming available to really take off – just like it did when ArcView hit the streets.

My only complaint at the moment is that I would like to have seen some pre-installed data (imagery) to quickly see something on the globe and get accustomed to it. Now that I have just set the startup option to be the satellite.nmf file that issue is now solved.

Tomt2U

Is Keyhole Markup Language (KML) becoming the defacto Spatial Transfer Protocol?

With the widespread adoption of Google Earth (GE) – the ‘free’ 3D web visualiser with intuitive navigation – its scripting language, KML, has become an effective means for users to create and share information. This early adoption of KML likely undermines the purpose of the OGC’s complex Geographic Markup Language (GML) protocols being slowly developed by internationally bodies – yet I believe KML is also stimulating a sluggish giant (the geocommunity) into action. The acceptance of KML by the (geo)community has not been missed, over the past year the basic KML specifications have evolved and a plethora of GIS individuals and vendors have provided tools to aid the geo-community to publish via KML.

Google Earth’s KML originated as the XML script for users of its predecessor (Keyhole – a Commercialised CIA Project) to add locations onto their maps and assign bookmarks to the applications display. Today’s KML specifications not only provide display and navigation parameters but also support data and processes previously limited to sophisticated GISystems – lines, polygons, images and textured 3D objects with their attributes and hyperlinks; streaming of very large datasets from remote websites, with “smart” loading of data at multiple levels of resolution; incremental updates with data loaded by NetworkLinks; display of table of content folders; …..

The GIS community has been quick to provide export tools to KML so they could use the ‘free’ GE as a publication media. For example, ESRI ArcGIS Extensions (Arc2Earth , KMLer, Shape2Earth, …) provide professional commercial products to convert layers, data frames, graphics and whole ArcGIS mxd project files into KML and vice-versa; NASA World Wind (‘the free GE for research geeks’) has extensions to do similar; and ESRI currently has its own Google Earth equivalent (ArcGIS Explorer – AGX) in late beta – AGX is officially scheduled for release along with ArcGIS 9.2 in Qtr4 2006 (though I expect a sooner release). Importantly, both the ArcGIS 9.2 and ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) specs say they will read/write KML directly, finally ending Google Earth’s (and recently, its sister Google Maps’) exclusive direct readability of KML and addressing the recent tightening of GE user licensing.

Google Earth’s End User License Agreement (EULA) has recently explicitly excluded the loading of the free GE and inexpensive GE Plus applications on business owned computers. Requiring businesses to purchase the $400/seat Pro or Enterprise GE versions. Note that Google Maps’ EULA appears to still offer its mapping service to businesses for free. If others can interpret the technical legalise of the Google Maps EULA and confirm whether business users can publish KML to GM for their end users (and their ‘business audience’ to freely view the KML in GM) please let us know.

So, will ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) be free? The recent news about its public beta say so, and I suspect it will remain free given ESRI backend applications – which supply much of the data and resources for these popular publishing platforms – will likely be in high demand while it is free to use. The geo-community quickly accepts free software that answers issues such as ‘how can I quickly (and cost effectively) show my maps to the world?’ Let’s just hope ESRI does not do the Google on us.

Has OGC and the International Standards Organisation (ISO) lost its opportunity to implement its well designed GML protocol? Time will tell.

Ciao from Tomt