Geometric Network Geoprocessing

I've been hammering away at a GIS migration project that has been going on far longer than anyone expected it might take, but I've gotten the opportunity to hack away at some Python to more or less fix a problem I found on TheGISForum:

I currently have a geometric network that I've been working with using the Utility Network Analyst tools. However, I've been trying to perform a few tasks that I've noticed the Network Analyst tools provide, but the Utility Network Analyst does not.

Specifically, I want to place barriers at all locations specified by a point feature class - a functionality provided by the "Add Locations" tool in the Network Analyst Toolset.

Is there a way to use the network analyst tools on a geometric network?

The answer, sadly, is no. As far as I can tell, ESRI has not released any geoprocessing tools for their Geometric Network.

But it is possible to roll-your-own solution to get the same kind of tools by using existing open source libraries. I have a newbish work-in-progress project along these exact lines.

Posted via email from The Pragmatic Geographer

WAURISA 2010 Conference

The Washington URISA conference is just about over, and it's made me realize how long it has been since I've gotten a chance to interact with the local GIS community. Some impressions:

• The panels were probably the best part. I see now why the Barcamp/Unconference model has become so popular. Unfortunate no one from ESRI/AutoDesk/etc participated in these as far as I can tell - just the local/state government representatives and open source guys.

• Best talk I heard was from Aaron Racicot on haiticrisismap.org and OSM. Even if you came in knowing the story, the energy of the speaker, quality of maps, and audience participation was excellent.

• I was happy to see there wasn't too much stigma hopping between rooms to hit particular talks as long as you were quiet and professional about it.

• It was nice to shake hands with some Well Known Nerds (WKN) of the open source GIS community.

• Some excellent balance in conversations about the variety of solutions to a given problem. No one was especially partisan about a particular product, software, or method.

• Vendors were not as aggressive as I had been warned.

• The turnout of the CUGOS group was good. I didn't seen any equivalent ESRI or AutoDesk user group wandering around in a similar fashion.

• Smart people giving poor presentations is heartbreaking. I know this might ring hollow coming from someone who didn't give a talk, but some folks should thumb through Presentation Zen again. Walls of text all over the place.

(credit)

Link Cleanup Time

First, an adorable picture General nerd stuff
Android iTouch killer? $155 is cheap. Looking seriously at this or the Dell Mini 5. Vendor's site.
MIX 10: what Microsoft is doing this year.
AI book worthy of a read.
The Hacker, Architect, and Superhero. Only problem with this is the sushi pictures making me hungry.

Some programming stuff
Function Dependency Inversion - something about currying. Something else about F#.
Usability and Python; why it is a pretty good language for beginners even though it has some conventions not used in too many other languages. Also here is PyYAML. I haven't looked at it but people in irc were all hyper about it.
Parallel Programming is hard? I was certainly under that impression.
Let them eat code cake; Ruby ActiveRecord stuff.
Google Clean Code talks.
Some design patterns from MS: Data Persistence, Unit Of Work. Also some LINQ for beginners.
Regular expressions for people that don't know them or could use a reminder.

It's me, I'm a data janitor
Database change management.

The Web!
REST and preventing race conditions.

Local Open source geo in the northwest.

Spatial Metadata: Why is it so hard?

Why can't my GIS data be as easy to organize/provide metadata for as my music collection?

I want a clean, detailed interface to explore my files. I want an indexed library for fast searches and simple playlist dataset/layer package/group/namespace creation. I want to change the owner, license, one-line description of files the same way I might change them in a Music folder in Windows Explorer, not by diving into some ugly wizard.

ESRI shouldn't throw out ArcCatalog, they should make it the iTunes of geospatial information. Move it from the smaller segmented market of GIS professionals to the mass market. Clean up the UI, throw up a "store" that connects with ArcGIS Online and the Resource Centers. Refashion the toolbox into components available for purchase from an in-application repository and open that repository to 3rd party developers (with a trusted [reviewed] and untrusted section).

Have it read every damn spatial format possible. Embed Webkit so you can jump to Bing, Google MyMaps, OpenStreetMap, WeoGeo, and everything else out there of geospatial interest. Metadata is largely a solved problem with my music in Foobar (music player). Why? Because of freedb, a license-free database of song metadata. There isn't any reason why we couldn't do something similar for spatial data.

Ideas are cheap and this is a lot of hard work, but it is something I'd like to see. There is a lot of moving parts to spatial data - a lot of sources, metadata, and datastores. It would be nice if we could abstract away all the stuff you currently have no interest in. The fact your spatial data is in PostGIS, or AGS, or in the cloud somewhere is unimportant when all you want to do is supply the key information of when it was collected and why.