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Getting Started with GIS?
The Plan 9 Bunny asks: "A company I work for is just getting starting to work with GIS and they want me to get it up and running. However, I don't know a damn thing about it. There's a slew of information on the Internet -- of widely varying quality. If the software is from ESRI, what would be a satisfactory starting point when it comes to laying the latticework for learning GIS? A plethora of books have been written about it, but like any subject, some are better than others. Also, I'm interested to hear about GIS horror stories: what to avoid, what NOT to purchase, etc... The ultimate goal is to have the data available on a publicly accessible webserver so clients can access it without needing the $30,000 worth of hardware and software. Can this be done with a UNIX-based solution, or are we yet again stuck in an NT world?" Those interested in GIS may wish to check out the last article we did on the subject. Considering the question, this older article on GIS mapping may also be of interest.
There are many other better alternatives. Do a little research on Google.
Why does it seem like, lately every Ask Slashdot question is along the lines of "Uh.. I have to do something for work/school... Not really sure where to start... What do you guys think?". It seems to me that questions should be posted only when they are interesting. Its not like useful info ever comes out of these questions anyways (Atleast nothing a google search wouldn't tell you).
P.S. I have a pascal compiler due for school. Anyone know where I should start?
Spencer Ogden
Getting Started with Geographic Information Systems by Keith Clarke (ISBN 0-13-294786-2). Short and skimmable for important info. It's a bit dated (1996) but will give you a quick overview of GIS terms before you move on to more specific needs (ESRI vs. Intergraph), and your local library probably has a copy. There are shortcomings to both packages, and you'll need to know something about what your people want to do with the GIS in order to select the best package. And, yes, Virginia, there is a Unix version. My employer (a university in the northeast) is a Sun house and we use ESRI's packages on a dozen SunBlade 1000s.
Give them an inch and they'll take a foot. Much more than that, you won't have a leg to stand on.
Their Spacial Database Engine (SDE) runs on many databases including Unix, but those who have had to work with it in my agency havn't had much good to say about it. It does work, but backwards compatibility doesn't seem to be a priority with ESRI and our developers have to check everything. Whenever I bring it up, even in the GIS department, there is always a groan of discontent.
ArcInfo is a windows only based product as of version 8. You can still get ArcInfo version 7.something for Solaris but last I heard they don't plan on making another Unix version. They do alot with "map objects" which is as I understand it very useful in Visual Basic and other COM based RADs but useless outside of windows.
They do have a new version of ArcIMS (Internet Mapping Server) which runs on the Struts framework from the Jakarta project. We just got version 4.0 a couple days ago but havn't opened the box yet. Hopefully it will be better than previous versions. I can say that ArcIMS 3.1 was MUCH better than ArcIMS version 3.0.
As a web developer I have been lusting over MapInfo's products but alas we already have ERSI in house and MapInfo and ESRI have never played well together.
If I wanted to deploy on a unix platform, just from what I have heard and seen thus far, I would look at MapInfo's product unless there is something you need that they can't do and ESRI can.
If you're interested in a free, Linux-based internet mapserver, check out MapServer. It even imports ESRI shapefiles, which I guess is the most widespread data format for GIS (it being very much a Window$ World)
78% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
I can tell you out of experience that Intergraph products look all cool and slick, but down in the trenches they dont play nicely with anything, not even other Intergraph programs...
esri products blow intergraph out of the water. ArcIMS is far superior that geomedia webmap, giving you much more control over the data. webmap is more for viewing data, arcims is for manipulation and dynamic queries and such.
The Esri shapefile format is pretty much the standard.
I too have been getting up to speed on GIS this year. I'm doing a Postgrad Dip in it at the moment. From all accounts ESRI is the defacto standard amongst most governmental bodies - councils, states, defense etc. Here in NZ ESRI is very strong - about 11 from 14 regional councils use ESRI. And yes it is windows only, the internal scripting which used to be Avenue, now uses Visual Basic. You also have objects that you can chuck in other VB applications to provide instant access to maps. This is not so bad when you consider that as a proportion of the total cost of the GIS, the hardware and software represent a small percentage of the total outlay - most of the expense comes back to data collection and management.
For a good theoretical background on GIS, Burrough et al (1998) Principles of Geographical Information Systems is proving quite good. For practical experience try ESRI's campus where a number of free and/or cheap (compared to training courses) practical courses in GIS are provided.
Hope this helps!
Cheers Gav
GIS is a vast field even if you dont throw in web access to data. narrow down your interest or hire someone to do the GIS side and you do the web access side.
web server..
MapServer - works and is mature and stable
ESRI's GIS data server is super expensive but the new version runs on Linux
PDFMap - combine this with mapserver so that your users can download maps they make
SVG - ive seen some cools things happening with SVG
MRSID - for image compression, costs for the compressor but i have built some cool stuff with thier free server.
desktop... .. if its open source and GIS its
at freegis.org but frankly there isnt allot built out yet thats simple yet modular
and will grow with GIS users as they begin to get specialized (image interp,
business siteing, habitat annalysis, etc).
ESRI has a free viewer which reads a XML file. its works ok. there is a Linux version but i havnt used it yet. all of the free (not open source) GIS viewers suck in one way or another cause the companys have some "real" version they really want you to buy (ala ESRI).
Free GIS
theres GRASS and some others but nothing close to the commercial products (unfortuantely). furthermore all of the commercial products are over priced. you have to spend 3,000$ US (single licence) to get anything at ESRI that works. If your going to manage a GIS data collection you should get ArcView but try to find a free solution for end users on the desktop. look at combining MapServer and some of the Content Management systems that are out there for developing GIS access online.
no sig today, come back tomorrow
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but the USGS has made its TIGR data set available for FREE download. This data is dated (looking at some of the places I've lived, it looks like it's about 15-20 years old now), but if you're learning how to work with GIS data it's good enough.
And did I mention it's FREE? This is a non-trivial concern - I'm pretty sure this is the dataset that Bruce Perens bought a number of years ago to turn over to OSS projects, at a cost of something like $2000. But now you can download it from their website.
If you go this way, you'll need at least 16 GB for the data. You'll also need to write your own ISO-8821 decoder. It's not too hard - it's not even hard to write tools that can read the compressed tar balls directly. But knowing what to do with that data is another matter....
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
You might also want to look into PostGIS. It's a set of extensions to PostgreSQL so that the later understands shape files, etc.
Their site should also have pointers to some projects that have successfully used the software.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This is really cool software which can either create and serve up images, or act as an interactive front end. It's open source, and very well engineered. Check it out
I was also fairly recently put in charge of creating some ArcIMS web sites at work. A pretty good online resource I've used to get up to speed on GIS is the ESRI virtual campus at http://campus.esri.com/ They have some free courses where you can learn the basics of GIS and some reasonably priced ~$100 more advanced courses. I was fairly suprized at how good they were.
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Well... normally I'm all yahoo for linux and unix, but if your solution happens to require NT, then what's the big deal? Access licenses? You won't need Access, since - and I'll be Frank - GIS mapping software usually runs on SQL Server, and it really is better to support the commercial software, which is much safer and more virus free than open source, which I hear is currently infested with a nasty vires called gepeelle, or something like that...
I saw 'GIS' and thought "Hurrah! New Geeks in Space! Woo!".
Then read the whole thing.
*sigh*
One word: BUGGY!
that's my only impression of it, after taking an intro to GIS class and going through the exercises. I dont know what happened, but with a version number 8.1, it ought to be pretty damn well tested by that version, but no...
GIS software isnt something extremly complex. take some bitmaps, some vectors and some points, layer them for display, throw in some CIS101 Algorythms and voila.
Okay, second word: Inconsistent interface! not very MFC-adhering. and for godssake, the wheel mouse doesnt work! how annoying when dealing w/ LONG lists of data.
alright, last word: clueless error messages. an operation doesnt work, and you get a non-descriptive error message which gives you no clues as to why it didnt work. In one case, operations were half completing then bombing out because I still had a spreedsheet open w/ excel in the background. No error message saying "Oh this file is in use by another program, we dont like that", just "Error". other cases not in mind right now.
If you are looking at the ESRI offerings, Modeling Our World (ISBN: 1-879102-62-5) is a pretty good introduction to ESRI's technologies for GIS.
My company develops GIS applications for utilities (power, water, sewer, gas, etc.) and we are an ESRI business partner, and I am a former Intergraph employee, so I won't get into who's best/worst in the business discussion.
I will say that GIS is a pretty wide open field, since very few colleges have undergraduate GIS programs and what most people need to find good jobs in the field is GIS combined with a solid Computer Science background. ArcInfo/ArcMap/SDE/ArcIMS give you the tools to "do" GIS, but they do require training and good knowledge of fundamental GIS principles. To create systems that combine GIS with day-to-day operations, you need to be able to customize these tools and/or create new applications that utilize these tools, which requires a combination of Computer Science and GIS (or a steep learning curve of on-the-job training).
If your GIS applications are strictly "in-house", you have much wider choices. ESRI has a lot of marketing and inertia behind their products, so you will find many GIS houses with an strong devotion to ESRI as a "standard" and many commercial data sources are going to be oriented toward that "standard".
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.
I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.
"I hereby grant this to the Public Domain"
Try there. I downloaded a ton of mapfiles from that site to begin trying to figure out how to convert them into something i can use for realtime navigation in my car.
I haven't gotten very far. But there are plenty 'o maps for download.
I have downloaded a chunk of the US census' free maps from ftp.census.gov, and started playing with stuff available from www.freegis.org, but I haven't been able to get the two to work together.
How the heck do I take the free maps (in particular, the layers with roads, borders, parks, forests, water, and other useful navigation stuff) and use them for realtime navigation with something like GPSDrive?
Is there any free nav software that will use shapefiles directly?
And what about the 2000 census data? It doesn't seem to be in a format I can even determine.
Any help is greatly appreciated. If I can ever get it working, I'll write a HOWTO.
Autodesk is doing some neat things with their MapGuide product, location sensitive thingies and path finding.
I think they're positioning it for WAP phones but the Server software itself does some very interesting things.
I believe the Server costs $3k CDN...
Schlumberger has a lot of stuff for Irix and Solaris and I think Linux.
Landmark sells an all-in-one product called "Openworks".
Do a bit of googling and you'll find lots of other companies offering GIS software for Unix. Most of my GIS experience is with Landmark's Openworks and Schlumberger's GeoQuest, which is why I mention them. I've dealt with about five other packages. This stuff tends to be rather pricey, but you can expect top-notch support from people who really grok the stuff. Lots of these companies will even send you an admin to work at your site full-time on keeping whatever package running smoothly.
I currently work in a lab primarily focused on dealing with end-users of GIS. We run a pure windows 2000 setup, though we used to have a few solaris machines sitting around for advanced projects. One issue that comes up with all of them is the ability to print.
We originally started running our print spooler off a netware box, which had the tendency to crash every few days. Then, we tried a unix box, which still had issues with crashing. Now, we use a win2k box for printer spooling, and the print spooler crashes after about 12 hours of use. This is a major pain for people needing to export stuff to paper.
If you want to tinker with Java source code, there's many implementations out there of varying completeness, but I could recommend you take a look at Geotools.
I took a course on GIS last year, the website is still online -- for a while at least! Check it out at:
/ in dex.html
http://geography.rutgers.edu/courses/01fall/321
What's important to realize is GIS isn't some magic program, but a way of looking at a problem to find possible solutions. Any other use besides that is a waste of time and money, and you should just use maps.