group5e

For our purposes we've ditched trimble units for phones and bluetooth gps devices combind with Avenza PDFMaps... and have never looked back.

Well it's pretty obvious that ArcGIS Pro will be the new defacto desktop envvironment soon. As for the current ArcGIS desktop, I always leave 64-bit processing off. It usually alleviates about 95% of any potential problems. If I need background processing (which is rare), there is other software outside of the ESRI framework that will allow for that or I'll use a workstation at work precisely for this purpose... set it and leave it.

It's refreshing to hear someone else who feels that the 64 bit background processing isn't worth the trouble it creates. It's such a crappy implementation in the desktop environment.

All versions have bugs... all versions will eventually give the 999999 error with no explanation. Its really up to you with respect to what toolboxes you need or even if any of the new features are relevant to what you do.

If you are talking about the google maps layer then the answer is no as its a cached with the labels already added I believe. If its imagery layers, then yes. Just use the aerial layer and not the hybrid layer. Google terrain layers do not have labeling as well.

Excellent design and ease-of-use. Well done! Thanks for this.

Is this meant to be a direct competitor to the ESRI platform? I have to be honest,the cross-platform intrigues me, but then again so does anything that is non-esri.

As much as I hate to agree with this. I have to. At least from the environmental GIS sector. Just as an example I had to walk a GIS "professional" from the provincial government on how to export to shapefile from Civil3D the other day. It makes you wonder.

It depends on whether or not your job market requires it. I'm in Canada and its relatively a non-issue if you have already proven track record. I don't recommend taking it in Canada unless you have extra money to burn. I have seen no benefit to the professional accreditation I received from ESRI in the job market here. The other issue is that if a company is asking for that accredation, usually they want it up-to-date. That means you will have to keep retaking it with every major new release (as the exams are tied to major releases). At the end of the day, your proven skills and who you know are much more relevant than a paid accreditation. I mean, I guess if all things are equal between candidates at the end of the day, it might get you the job. As far as exam preparation goes, I believe there used to be some old course materials on this website at one point. You can do a search for that. Other than that, look at sample questions and take the free course here: https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/57630431851d31e02a43ee38/esri-technical-certification:-sample-questions-for-arcgis-desktop-associate/ It will give you an indication on how questions will be asked and what to expect. Be aware that the professional exam is much more technically inclined and specific. I've taken that particular exam and there are some tricky questions. Personally, I don't think its worth the money and isn't an industry standard here.

Is it not even showing the xml at its specified web address? Or is it just not showing it when accessed through the viewer?

This is a very very broad question. It really depends on what you will be using it for. When starting out I start out with only 2 major questions: 1) What functionality do I need? Less is more. Too many web mapping apps are loaded with almost too much functionality. It's a challenge making something that is robust functionally and intuitive to use at the same time. Many of the templates you will use will only have 50% of what you will actually need and the other 50% will be things you don't need/want. This includes security. This also includes determining whether or not users will connect through a mobile device to your app as well as a PC (this changes a lot of things). Things like User vs. Administrator functionality need to be considered, target audience, large-scale multi-user editing requiring enterprise dbms, etc... Open source vs. properietary? 2) What back-end will I use to store and manage the data and what front-end will you use to deliver the data (i.e. Silverlight, HTML5, etc...) They each have their advantages and disadvantages and is usually determined by the functionality I need. There are still reasons to use Silverlight in some rare cases. They are tools to do the job, just like a hammer or wrench. I've seen some terrific Silverlight webGIS (our main company editor is still utilizing Silverlight due to the fact it can still do somethings our staff rely on, that something like HTML5 cannot). On the reverse, I've seen some terrible HTML5 webGIS applications as well. Although I do strongly urge most people to stay away from Silverlight due to the obvious fact that its not supported by a lot of new browsers as well as UI issues it tends to have. There are no real "best practices" for what to put on a user's site because it's dependent directly on what the user will be doing with it. For example at our office, we like everything minimalist and this means no scale bars, scale text, etc... on the map (these only show up if the user wants them to from the toolbar or in a print layout). Our staff want maximum imagery and no "filler". We use regional and local projections (i.e. MTM or UTM zones) and not generic Mercator projections as we need good measurements with little distortion. We do NOT like to use cloud storage (this is different obviously for other businesses). We put lots of effort into creating good printing templates for reports (this is something that is really really neglected I find on web GIS apps). I mean I guess you could say north arrow, scalebar, print, export, legend etc... but those aren't really best practices that are related to WebGIS as they apply to all cartographic products. Things like heat maps, cluster mapping etc are often used incorrectly. In order to use this type of mapping you really need a nice amount of representative data. Having a heat map generated from say 20 points over a large national area is relatively useless. I don't recommend these things unless your data is good enough to support it. Web GIS applications are often created with what looks like the intended purpose of fully replacing a desktop environment and I strongly think this is a recipe for disaster because its impossible to do that. I see a lot of Geocortex solutions do this and a lot of it is just screen "bloatware" (its a great product in the right circumstances though). Consider these adjectives: - intuitive - responsive - quick - easy - simple - comprehensible - stream-lined If your application can meet most of these, then you are on your way. Of course, the application is only 1/2 of the package. The data is the other 1/2. If the data isn't properly prepped, etc for use on the web or in your application then your awesome application will run slower as it struggles with the loading of the data. When you say it is for commercial use, do you mean you will be using it to sell products on it commercially (i.e. such as an air photo library), or do you mean it will be used by "Company X" as a generic viewer for their staff at work?

ESRI pricing everyone out except fortune 500 companies and governmental agencies... In other news, the grass is wet...

The terrific thing about this software isn't necessarily google imagery, but rather when you pair it with something like mobac or sasplanet. You can pretty much automate tile creation for a service and have it simultaneously served up by the portable map server. This is terrific with sasplanet when for example you have a REST service that needs an referer in order to work. Download the tiles in sasplanet, then they appear in the service that you created in portable map server. If anyone knows how to add a referer directly into a portable map service, I'm all ears xD.

Thanks for the response. I've solved the photo issue. Turns out Geocortex doesn't add the final "/" at the end of the IMG tag. I feel pretty silly there haha. However the other issue regarding the data link to a specific Microsoft Access database is still not showing. Interestingly enough, I have other links going to other queries in the exact same database and they are functioning superbly.